UNCLE GEORGE'S 
LETTERS 

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GEORGE H. ALLEN 



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Book . ,A 'V 

(iopyright N° 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 






























UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS TO THE 
GARCIA CLUB 












































































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The Garcia Club. 


Dncle George’s Letters 


TO THE 


Garcia Club 


By GEORGE H. ALLEN 

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A uthor of “ A Commercial Pilgrim * 


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Published by the 

CEDARINE ALLEN CO. 

CLINTON, NEW YORK 


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Copyright, 1902 

BY 

GEO. H. ALLEN 


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CONTENTS 


In May, 1901, Garcia 15 

Uncle George starts on his trip, and feels the 
effect of the Garcia yell, and runs up against 
the Mormons 

In June, 1901, Garcia 26 

Uncle George meets his old friend John, goes 
up the coast, and gives the trade some Garcia 
breeze. 

In July, 1901, Garcia 34 

Uncle George crosses the 180th meridian, tells 
the British Admiral his version of the picking 
up and dropping a day. The Admiral weeps 
and Uncle George sees whales. 

In August, 1901, Garcia 48 

Uncle George finds it hot in Hong Kong. He 
sees a Chinese execution in Canton, and takes 
ship for Manila. 

In September, 1901, Garcia .... 68 

The Garcia Club failed to hear from Uncle 
George, but publish free of charge the adver- 
tising booklet, “Among the Filipinos.” 


3 


CONTENTS 


In October, 1901, Garcia ...... 77 

Uncle George is back in Clinton. The editors 
of the Garcia have mixed feelings. They 
work a scheme on Uncle George and get copy 
for the Garcia for months to come. Uncle 
George addresses the Garcia Club. Tells them 
how the black plague scared him stiff, and 
gives his views on the missionaries in China. 

In November, 1901, Garcia 90 

Is a continuation of Uncle George’s address. 

He sits on his feelings to keep them down, 
sees the Filipinos where they grow, and finds 
a hotel. 

In December, 1901 101 

The Garcia tells how Uncle George got his 
washing done. What he thinks of Manila 
rapid transit. How he squared himself with 
Governor Taft. How the Lieutenant took 
him in. What he thinks of Dagupan, and his 
interview with General Chaffee 

In January, 1902, Garcia 123 

You’ll learn how the enthusiastic official would 
jump his job and hunt for gold, if it wasn’t 
for his present pay; and how Uncle George 
started on a trip for Mindanao. 


4 


CONTENTS 


February, 1902, Garcia 133 

Tells of conditions in Mindanao, the Secre- 
tary’s champagne, and the musical aged rela- 
tive. 

March, 1902, Garcia 146 

Tells of the niggardly Captain and his commis- 
sary supplies, and the Filipino gold diggers. 

April, 1902, Garcia 161 

Tells of Patrick Michael McDinnis, an Irish- 
man, with a gold mine worth ten million 
dollars, and how he got Uncle George to go 
and take a look at it. 

May, 1902, Garcia 175 

Tells how Uncle George caught the gold fever, 
and agreed to invest in an option on Mac’s 
mines. 

In June, 1902, Garcia 188 

Is the conclusion of Uncle George’s address to 
the Garcia Club. 


5 



















ILLUSTRATIONS 


The Garcia Club 


.Frontispiece. 


“I told him that I understood it was this 

way” Facing page 

“Struck off the foremost wretch’s head be- 
fore the eyes of the waiting thirteen” 
Facing page 

“A-mong The Fil-i-pi-nos” Page 



60 

69 y^ 


“One of The Best Streets in Da-gu-pan” 

Page 71 

“Has Un-cle George Caught a Fish”. .Page 73 y 
“Stand Still and Look Pleas-ant” Page 75 ~ 


“There’s no dangher, sur,” Mac said, “you 
can’t sink a banka, sur” . . . Facing page 


171 




“I photographed that squad with my Cam- 
era” Facing page 177 

“Mac industriously pounded the ore,” 

Facing page 181 

“The Secretary signed as a witness” 

Facing page 191 


y" 

y 

/ 



INTRODUCTION 


BY THE AUTHOR 

In our day, anyone who publishes a book 
ought to have a good reason for doing so or 
be sent to jail. 

In the face of the above statement this book 
is published. 

Not so very long ago the author organized 
seven boys into a debating society. The boys 
called themselves the Garcia Club, and the 
seven quickly grew to twenty. Twenty lads 
between the ages of thirteen and seventeen are 
a good many, when the possibilities for good 
or evil from that many young Americans are 
considered. These twenty boys, who called 
themselves the Garcia Club, started a society 
paper. The Garcia Magazine they called it. 
Eight pages, including the covers, was the size 
of the periodical. Like magic its subscription 
9 


INTRODUCTION 


list jumped from nothing to twenty wildly en- 
thusiastic and admiring subscribers, and in its 
very first issue it was gravely stated on its 
Editorial page that The Garcia was published 
for the good of mankind in general and the 
Garcia Club in particular; and sundry village 
merchants were invited to advertise in its 
columns. 

These merchants were assured that it would 
pay them to advertise in The Garcia. 

The purchasing power of twenty households 
being duly considered a goodly number of the 
merchants saw the point, and good naturedly 
advertised — thinking, no doubt, that The 
Garcia would die in a month — and The Garcia 
Magazine was launched. 

To-day the Garcia Club (with a respectable 
waiting list) is composed of twenty young 
Americans, not counting one middle-aged 
American, and The Garcia Monthly Magazine 
has appeared for eighteen consecutive months. 

If in that time it has made no perceptible 
dent on “mankind in general/' it has kept the 


io 


INTRODUCTION 


boys hustling to keep the enterprise going, and 
that achievement has been a benefit “to the 
Garcia Club in particular,” and so fifty per 
cent, of what the boys started out to do with 
their “magazine” has been accomplished, which 
is a mighty good per cent, when you know boys. 

Many of a larger growth have done less. 

Early in the year 1901, a trip around the 
world, to sell goods in the United States until 
their western border should be reached, to 
buy goods in the Orient, and to investigate the 
much talked of resources of the Philippine 
Islands was on the author’s program. 

The Garcia Club asked him on the eve of his 
departure, while on that trip to be a special cor- 
respondent for The Garcia monthly. 

“Uncle George's Letters to the Garcia Club” 
letters written for a boys’ play paper, was the 
result of that request. 

The publication of the letters in that eight- 
page “magazine” (including covers), “pub- 
lished for the benefit of mankind in general 
and the Garcia Club in particular,” caused 


11 


INTRODUCTION 


certain friends of the author to suggest to him 
that those letters ought to be published in book 
form, to which the author made the remark 
seen at the beginning of this introduction. 

These alleged friends declared that the 
quality of the letters was reason enough for the 
publication of this book and furthermore, as 
an evidence of good faith, solemnly agreed, if 
worst came to worst, to stand between jail and 
the author. So “Uncle George's Letters to the 
Garcia Club ” are published between these 
two covers. 

The author has great confidence in the 
covers. 

He had nothing to do with them. He gave 
a competent book-binder carte blanche to go 
ahead and get them up right. 

The book is not a romance, neither is it a love 
story. It is a simple, truthful, unvarnished ac- 
count of what the author saw along the way, 
with side lights on some conditions in the 
Philippine Islands, which may be of interest to 
all American citizens. 


12 


INTRODUCTION 


However much the author’s friends may 
have erred in judgment in urging the publica- 
tion of this book the author is prepared to state 
on his own authority, and boldy and unquali- 
fiedly to stand by his statement, that there is at 
least one truth herein, that ought to sink deeply 
and indelibly into the minds of all civilized 
humanity. And the author stands ready to 
redeem his promise and be ‘‘Uncle George” to 
all who follow his advice in relation to the 
above named truth. 

Friends, “Uncle George's Letters to the 
Garcia Club” are before you. “Drink hearty.” 


13 













The Garcia 


VOL. 1. CLINTON, N. Y., MAY, 1901. No. 5 


Unde George's First Letter . 

Written for The Garcia , by the Garcia 
boys’ Uncle George, whom they are send- 
ing around the world to write for The 
Garcia , and to do a little business on 
the side for himself, to pay expenses. 
Now is the time to subscribe for The 
Garcia, only 25c. a year. Here is Uncle 
George’s first story. More will follow. 
Subscribe for The Garcia now. 

Running out of Ogden, Utah, May 15, 1901. 

My Dear Boys : Your Uncle George has 
been hitting it off at a rapid pace since you 
started him out of Clinton station on the even- 
ing of the 7th. 

Haven’t been able to cipher out whether it 
15 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


was the engineer or the Garcia yell that started 
me off and has kept me going at such a clip. 
What with the engines pulling and that yell 
pushing, I have made, so far, an extraordinary 
trip. I left the rails at Buffalo, struck earth 
again at Cleveland, rattled through Chicago, 
lit in Kansas City, got my bearings next in 
Pueblo, Colo., and blew into Salt Lake City 
early on the morning of the 14th, and wher- 
ever I struck mother earth along the way I 
made her give me of her increase in the way 
of good fat orders. 

Never had such a trade. 

The dealers simply threw up their hands 
when they saw me coming, and said : “About 
how many of these goods do you think we 
ought to have, Allen?” 

Now this is unusual, and I can account for 
it in only one way. 

It was that Garcia yell! 

I was charged and surcharged with Garcia 
push, breathed into and through me by twenty, 
more or less, breezy, pushing young Ameri- 
16 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


cans who came down to the station and filled 
me full of their overflowing life and energy. 
Of course the dealers threw up their hands 
when they saw me coming, and said : “About 
how much, Allen ?” How could they help 
it? 

And, boys, I rose to the occasion. 

My idea of how much they needed bore a 
close resemblance, as to size, to the ambitions 
and aspirations of the Garcia Club. They 
winked and blinked, but took the medicine. 
And with the echoes of the Garcia yell follow- 
ing me through the gorges and canyons of the 
Rocky Mountains, and across this great Amer- 
ican Desert, echoes that gather force and 
strength as they follow on — with these behind 
and a great Mogul engine on before, making 
a dash for the Sierra Nevadas — to-morrow will 
see me in San Francisco, boys, loaded to the 
guards with a determination to do that town, 
and do it well. 

And as I sail out through the Golden Gate 
with my next stop, Honolulu, two thousand 
iZ 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


miles away, I’ll bear in mind the Garcia boys 
and drop you a line from that point. 

What do you know of Salt Lake City, boys ? 
One of the most beautiful and interesting cities 
in the world, is this modern city of Zion. She 
has one hundred miles of brook-lined streets 
one hundred and thirty-two feet wide. She 
nestles down in Salt Lake valley with lofty 
snow-capped mountain peaks on every side, 
with Great Salt Lake a few minutes’ ride away, 
itself one of nature’s greatest wonders — a sea 
2500 square miles in area, with salt enough 
in it to supply the world through countless 
ages. And to take a bath in this Great Salt 
Lake ! I didn’t hit it this time boys — it was 
too early in the season — but I have on former 
trips, and I give you my word you’ll carry the 
sensation to your dying day should you ever 
take the plunge. Your Uncle George had to 
hustle for all he ever got until he took a bath 
in Salt Lake, then he struck a swim where he 
didn’t have to “kick and paddle.” The water 
bears you up without an effort, and you float 
18 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


around like so much cork. You couldn’t pos- 
sibly sink if you tried. 

But to get back to Salt Lake City. 

Four thousand feet above sea level that city 
of Zion stands, fanned by mountain breezes, 
with genial climate and with hot baths within 
her borders, the water boiled by nature’s fur- 
naces underneath the ground. 

Salt Lake’s clearances are one hundred mil- 
lion dollars per annum. She has spent $700,- 
000 for school buildings in the past two years. 
She has a city and county building that cost 
$1,000,000. She has 60,000 population and 
draws tribute from a country one thousand 
miles in diameter, and tourists come from the 
ends of the earth to gaze on and wonder at her 
marvelous charms and take her health-giving 
baths. She stands four square, does this mod- 
ern city of Zion, with more broad streets run- 
ning at right angles than any city I have ever 
seen, and with a temple of worship the most 
costly in America. Five million dollars this 
temple cost and forty years was it in building. 
19 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


The founders of the Mormon Church conceived 
and planned it, and some of them lived to see 
it finished. 

A wonderful church is the church of the 
Latter Day Saints of Utah, whose headquar- 
ters are in Salt Lake City. By all odds the 
richest church, per capita, of all the churches in 
Christendom. Notwithstanding the crooked- 
ness of their creed, its founders were great 
heads. Pushed from pillar to post, they set- 
tled in the great American Desert, and they 
have made the desert blossom. With consum- 
mate skill they planned an organization which 
holds its adherents in a vise-like grip, and is 
at once a business and religious institution, 
which for material success may well cause the 
“Gentile world’’ to take off its hat in silent 
admiration. And they know the Scriptures, 
do these Mormons of the Mormon Church. 
The same identical Bible, boys, that you and 
I make a stab at learning, they learn. 

That is, from Genesis to Revelation it is the 
same as ours. They have added “The Book 
20 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


of Mormon” to it. The deacons, elders and 
Sunday-school teachers of our churches would 
find it necessary to brush up in their Bible lore 
if they wished to cross swords in scriptural 
argument with an average Mormon layman 
or Sunday-school scholar. 

Your Uncle George has gotten into argu- 
ments with them on former journeys through 
their land, and 'he has always found it con- 
venient to change the subject and discuss the 
scenery, crops, trade or some other worldly 
theme, on which he was, alas, better able to 
hold his own. 

As I left my hotel in Ogden to-day, on my 
way to board a car bound for the depot, the 
bell boy, a lad of some dozen years, not half 
as bright naturally as any boy in the Garcia 
Club, walked with me, carrying my little grip. 

“Are you a Mormon boy ?” I asked. 

“Yes, sir!” 

“Do you attend Sunday-school?” 

“Yes, sir!” 

“What was your lesson last Sunday?” 


21 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


“We reviewed our last twelve lessons.” 

“What was one of those lessons about?” 

“About Jesus and the woman of Samaria.” 

“What do you know about that lesson?” 

And, boys, he could have told me in less 
time what he didn’t know about it. 

“What was another lesson?” I asked. 

“Jesus and the ten lepers.” 

“What do you know about that lesson ?” 

Say, boys, I wish I knew how to sell furni- 
ture as well as that little Mormon boy knew 
all about that Sunday-school lesson of the ten 
lepers. 

“How much do you give to the church?” I 
asked. 

“Ten cents of every dollar I earn.” 

Just then my car came along and I handed 
that little Mormon boy “two bits.” I felt 
morally certain that two and one-half cents of 
it would find its way into the treasury of the 
house of Zion. 

A Mormon miner struck it rich a few days 
ago. He found a mine that yielded him $250,- 


22 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


ooo. He promptly drew his check for $25,000 
payable to the order of the Church of Zion. 

The bell boy, the capitalist and all the grades 
between, pay tithes to the Church, one-tenth of 
their income. “Your tithes, your tithes,” is the 
cry of the Mormon Church, and whatever else 
the Mormon does with ninety per cent, of his 
income, there is no “shenanegan” about ten per 
cent, of it. It goes right into the treasury of 
Zion’s Church of the Latter Day Saints. If 
there is any “shenanegan” played with it after 
that, he doesn’t know it and doesn’t have to 
bother his head about it. The heads of the 
Church take care of that. All Mr. Mormon 
Layman has to do is to go right along, pip the 
Scriptures, earn another bunch and cut off ten 
per cent. And he does it, too. Which goes 
to prove my assertion that the founders of the 
Mormon Church were great heads. “Bring me 
all your tithes into my storehouse and I’ll open 
the windows of heaven and pour you out a 
blessing that you can’t contain,” or words to 
that effect, you’ll find in the Scriptures, boys. 
23 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


You’ll find them over in Malachi somewhere, 
just this side of Matthew. Chances are your 
uncle hasn’t given them verbatim, but that is 
the gist of it. I have no Mormon layman or 
Bible handy to refer to. 

Yesterday’s Salt Lake Tribune gave an ac- 
count of the passing away of a bishop of the 
Mormon Church. 

From what I read, I gathered that this 
bishop fashioned his life in many respects after 
Jacob. He was full of years, full of honors 
and had children a-plenty. 

“Few and evil have been the days of the 
years of my pilgrimage, and they have not 
attained unto the days of the years of the pil- 
grimage of my fathers,” Jacob confessed to 
Pharaoh. 

You’ll find it over in Genesis somewhere, 
boys ; I can’t give you the chapter and verse. 

Now while this particular saint in Zion’s 
household, who recently passed away in Salt 
Lake City, might have joined with Jacob in 
his lament over the length of his days and sev- 


24 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


eral other matters, he certainly had no kick 
coming on the score of children. Jacob had 
only twelve sons and a daughter on record to 
his credit, while our Salt Lake City hero had 
twenty-nine, nineteen of whom survived him 
and likewise two wives. 

The latter part of that statement, as chron- 
icled by the Salt Lake Tribune , taken with 
other things that come to the surface on one’s 
journey through Mormondom, leads your 
uncle to say “alas and alack” for the Edmunds 
law, which went to join six of the bishop’s chil- 
dren — the six who don’t survive him — when 
Utah was promoted to Statehood. 

Good-bye, boys! “Lunch is now ready in 
the dining-car,” the porter says. I’ll send you 
another letter for The Garcia from Honolulu. 

Your Uncle 

George. 


25 


The Garcia 


VOL. i. CLINTON, N. Y., JUNE, 1901. No. 6 


Unde George 9 s Second Letter. 

Vancouver, B. C. 

On Board Empress of India, bound for Hong 
Kong, May 27, 1901. 

My Dear Boys : Your Uncle fully intended 
to sail out through the Golden Gate on the 
Coptic, May 21st, and drop you a line from 
Honolulu, but the trade up the coast were 
pining for some Garcia breeze, and I couldn’t 
find it in my heart to say them nay. 

My only object in giving the coast towns 
the shake was to touch at the Sandwich 
Islands en route to China and tell the Garcia 
boys about them and, on the side, satisfy my 
own curiosity as to what they were like. 

This line of steamers, by odds the finest and 
26 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


fastest on the Pacific, running in connection 
with the Canadian Pacific Railroad, doesn’t 
touch at the Sandwich Islands, but after leav- 
ing Victoria makes no stop until Yokohama, 
Japan, is reached. The agent for the Cana- 
dian Pacific and this line of steamers, in San 
Francisco, who was keen to sell me transporta- 
tion over his line to China, assured me, when 
I told him what was on my mind, that the 
Sandwich Islands would keep. That if I was 
in a hurry to get to Hong Kong, his shop had 
the goods. Waxing eloquent, he said : “The 
steamers out of ’Frisco for the Orient are 
boats; they float — when they don’t sink — but, 
man alive,” he said, “do you want to get to 
Hong Kong — do you want to get there ? Is 
time any object to you?” (I ought to be in 
Hong Kong this minute, boys, but I looked 
indifferent.) “Well,” I said, “I want to see 
the Sandwich Islands.” 

I like to hear a salesman talk, boys, when 
he is on to his job. I can always get some 
pointers, and this fellow was a cracker jack. 

27 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


“My friend,” he said, “those Sandwich Islands 
haven’t moved a peg for a thousand years, and 
they’ll stay right where they are for another 
thousand — I'll guarantee it. See ’em next time. 
See here, you look like a man who values time. 
The Coptic sails to-day at i p. m. The Em- 
press sails six days later, she’ll catch the Coptic 
in the Inland Sea of Japan, pass her and run 
into Hong Kong June 18th.” “And the Cop- 
tic ?” “Oh, she’ll get to Hong Kong the next 
day — if she don't sink.” 

I bought his goods, made Portland, Tacoma, 
Seattle and Vancouver on the way, have their 
scalps at my belt, and we are just off for Yoko- 
hama, and touch in a few hours at Victoria, 
across the Georgia Gulf, where I’ll mail these 
lines to Clinton. 

* * * * * * * 
Some twenty-two years ago, boys, your 
Uncle lived in a little town in Pennsylvania, 
about half the size of Clinton. There was no 
debating society there, but in “Goose Town” 
(that wasn’t the name of the town, but that 
28 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


was what our town called it) there was a 
healthy debating society, held in a district 
school house every Saturday night. 

“Goose Town” was five miles away. Now 
in that town, where your Uncle lived, there 
was living another young fellow about your 
Uncle’s age, John we’ll call him. That wasn’t 
his name, but we’ll call him John, and the only 
thing in this story that isn’t true is that this 
boy’s name was not John. 

John was teaching school out in the country, 
coming home Friday nights to spend Sunday, 
and saving his money to go through college, 
and your Uncle George was painting furniture 
in a furniture factory. While John and your 
Uncle sat, one Friday night, on a dry goods 
box in front of a village store, wasting our 
time, we made it up to go the next night over 
to “Goose Town” to interview that debating 
society. 

That was in the early fall. I can’t remem- 
ber that we missed a Saturday night at that 
little debating society, until the following June. 

29 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


Neither of us had a horse, but our neighbor, 
“Daddy Gray,” had a horse and a buckboard. 
As it comes back to me now, “Daddy” must 
have been an easy mark, because John and I 
made a deal with him for his horse and buck- 
board (it was a good rig, too) for every Sat- 
urday night to go to “Goose Town,” and the 
price was fifty cents per night. We had to be 
our own hostlers, which was just as well, be- 
cause sometimes we got back late and “Daddy” 
was getting on in years. 

No matter the wind, no matter the weather, 
rippity clip, over frozen roads, plinkity plunk, 
through muddy roads, John and your Uncle 
with “Daddy Gray’s” horse and buckboard 
went to “Goose Town” debating society, from 
October to June. That was twenty-two years 
ago, and twenty-two years has not been long 
enough with its jolts and jars and muddy holes 
to drive out the friendship that was jolted and 
jarred into John and your Uncle George as 
they went rippity clip over frozen roads and 
plinkity plunk through muddy roads to “Goose 


30 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


Town” debating society. It is hard to measure 
just how much good “Goose Town” debating 
society did John and your Uncle, but it is safe 
to say that the Garcia Club owes its inception 
to it. 

John went his way through college and into 
the ministry; your Uncle his, through the fac- 
tory into business — a drummer on the road. 
John always got there. A poor boy, with his 
way to make, he was valedictorian of his class 
in college. He took hold of the Gospel and 
pushed it as business men push their business. 
All these years John and I have swapped stories 
about pushing our respective lines. 

John is a good fellow, you can depend. 

Somehow or other, drummers don’t asso- 
ciate with preachers very much, but many of 
my dearest friends are preachers. I think they 
are just as good as we are. I know John is. 

I’ve been to John’s house and John’s been 
to mine. He preached in Clinton once about 
ten years ago, and he waked the echoes of the 

old Stone Church. John wakes ’em up wher- 
31 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


ever he goes. He got the hang of it in “Goose 
Town” debating society. He pushed his line 
in different places, from one big church to 
another, always enthusiastic. Why, boys, if 
by some unwise decree all preachers had to 
stop preaching and hunt a job at something 
else, I wouldn’t borrow any trouble about John. 
J believe John could sell goods on the road. 

Whatever John does, he always does it as 
if he were doing it at so much per — by the job. 
All these years as I have heard him preach, 
from time to time, it seemed to me that John 
was preaching just as most of us drummers 
have to make sales — on commission, no sale, 
no pay. 

Well, one of the biggest churches, out here 
on the Pacific coast, wanted a preacher. As 
they pay $5,000 a year for their preacher, they 
were a little particular about whom they got. 
John preached so hard (or easy) in an Eastern 
state that they heard of him clear over here 
on the Pacific coast and invited him to come 

over, at their expense, and preach a couple of 
32 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


sermons for them. If they’d asked me about 
him I could have saved them that expense. 
I’d have guaranteed that they’d want John. 

John has been preaching here on the coast 
now for some little time. I spent last Sunday 
with him, and as I heard him eloquently pour- 
ing out great gospel truths to between thirteen 
and fourteen hundred souls (that’s the average 
size of John’s congregation), and as I saw and 
felt that great gathering drinking in the truth, 
I could almost hear “Daddy Gray’s” buckboard 
say “rippity clip, plinkity plunk,” and that 
buckboard and “Goose Town” debating society 
seemed to have a part in the sermon. As we 
walked to John’s home from church that night, 
he admitted to me that they had, and no 
small part either. 

Good-bye, boys, I’ll write you from China 
for your July Garcia . Your Uncle 

George. 


33 


The Garcia 


VOL. 1. CLINTON, N. Y., JULY, 1901. No. 7 


Unde George's Third Letter . 

On Board Empress of India, Northern 
Pacific, Mid Ocean, i8oth Meridian. 

June 4, 1901, the next day after the 2d. 
Boys, your Uncle George is bursting with 
a big thing. I’m putting it down on paper 
as fast as I can. We sailed out of Victoria 
on this good ship on the 27th of May. Struck 
into the Northern Pacific Ocean and had seven 
days of cold winter weather, some snow, no 
storms, just a monotonous, steady grind until 
we sighted the Aleutian Islands on the morn- 
ing of the second of June. They were in 
sight all day, and for several hours only two 
or three miles distant. 

They are cold, bleak and barren mountains. 
We struck the 180th meridian after losing 
34 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


sight of the islands and then we lost the next 
day, Monday, the 3d. 

But IVe something to pay for the day I’ve 
lost. 

Your Uncle has got it in for the school text 
books, boys. 

They aren’t playing fair by the youth of 
America. They don’t explain many things 
they should make clear, and then, again, they 
create erroneous impressions with the pictures 
in their books. 

Take the losing of a day going west and 
gaining a day going east at the 180th west 
meridian, for instance. They don’t make that 
point clear to you. 

They’ve left it for your Uncle George to 
do, and your Uncle is a busy man and has other 
fish to fry, but when he sees a great yawning 
gulf of silence which should be filled with 
golden information, you know your Uncle well 
enough to know if he has the coin he’ll fill 
the gulf. 

And he just has. 

He picked it up on shipboard to-day. 

35 


UNCLE GEORGE'S LETTERS 


Now your school books tell you that there 
are four minutes of time to each degree, and 
then they rattle around the subject, but don’t 
tell you in a clear, concise and understandable 
manner just how that day is lost and where 
it’s gone, or just how it’s gained and what 
you do with it after you’ve got it. 

My idea is that they’ve been fighting shy 
of the subject and haven’t dared to tackle it, 
and I’ve good reason to believe that your Uncle 
George has discovered the true explanation 
and he’s going to give it to The Garcia. 

We sailed up to that 180th meridian, crossed 
it, and lost the day with a snap, and it set 
everyone on board talking about it — explaining 
how it was — all but your Uncle George. 

He just kept mum and listened. 

I tell you, boys, there’s nothing like travel- 
ing and keeping your eyes and ears open to 
get knowledge that you can’t possibly find in 
books. 

I’ve sat around all day just listening, and 
night’s come and I’ve got it — it’s my meat. 

36 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


Vice-Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge is on this 
ship, going out to Japan to relieve Admiral 
Seymour. He takes command of the British 
Asiatic squadron when he reaches Yokohama. 
He is one of the most affable, genial, kindly 
gentlemen Fve ever met. 

I sought him out this evening in the li- 
brary and finding him disengaged, asked him 
if he could spare a few moments of his time. 
He said he could, and I told him I was cor- 
respondent for The Garcia , a monthly maga- 
zine published in the United States, a period- 
ical designed to disseminate information, to 
throw light and understanding into hitherto 
unilluminated corners ; that I knew an Admiral 
in his Majesty’s navy would be authority on 
what I had on my mind; that I believed, after 
listening all day to nearly everyone on ship- 
board, telling how it was, that I had found 
the true explanation of the dropping and pick- 
ing up of the day at the 180th meridian, and 
would he kindly listen to it, and if he found 
any flies on it would he shoo them off ? 

37 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


He said he would and I thanked him and 
told him that I understood it was this way : 

“The earth being about 8,000 miles in di- 
ameter, its circumference would be a little 
more than three times 8,000 miles, or in round 
numbers about 25,000 miles, and the equator 
being an imaginary line drawn around the 
centre from east to west, the lines of latitude 
running parallel thereto, and the lines of longi- 
tude running north and south, thus cutting the 
earth’s surface into imaginary squares, or ap- 
proximate squares, their exact geometrical de- 
scription not being necessary to this definition, 
the aforesaid longitudinal lines terminating 
at the north and south poles, the north pole 
being situated at the northernmost part of the 
earth’s surface — which nobody can deny — and 
the south pole being situated at the southern- 
most part of the earth’s surface — a like indis- 
putable fact — it also being obvious to the most 
casual observer that the poles being situated 
as they are, and where they are, they cannot 
come into juxtaposition; the only juxtaposition 
38 



“I TOLD HIM I UNDERSTOOD IT WAS THIS WAY.” — Page 88. 































































TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


of the poles being confined to the Poles of 
Poland, telegraph poles, hop poles, fish poles, 
bean poles, pole cats and other poles not in 
and of the class known and described as north 
and south poles, the earth revolving on its axis 
once in every twenty-four hours and making 
a tour of its orbit once in each calendar year, 
the moon influencing the tides of the sea, 
the currents of the sea having some influence 
over current events, but none to speak of over 
white currants, black currants, red currants 
or currant jelly, the earth being encased in its 
own atmosphere, through which we are able 
to see the heavenly or celestial bodies, it being 
an indisputable fact that “There are celestial 
bodies and bodies terrestrial, the sun, and 
moon, and stars, one star differing from an- 
other star in glory,” it naturally follows from 
the foregoing — in fact it’s patent to the most 
clouded intellect, any minds and all minds at 
once leaping to the logical conclusion that, if 
all the inhabitants of the earth now residing 
east of the meridian of Greenwich and west of 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


the 180th meridian west were to pack their 
grips and start from the meridian of Green- 
wich at high noon, setting their watches with 
Greenwich time, and travel westward with the 
velocity of the sun, and if at the same time 
all of the inhabitants of the earth now residing 
west of the meridian of Greenwich and east 
of the 180th meridian west would likewise 
pack up and start eastward, making their start 
from the meridian of Greenwich at high noon 
with their watches set with Greenwich time 
and also travel with the velocity of the sun, all 
the travelers taking care meanwhile not to 
monkey with their watches aside from keeping 
them well screwed up and oiled, they would 
find, upon reaching the 180th meridian west, 
that their watches were just twelve hours off, 
and in the light of the above explanation, even 
the most feeble-minded will at once clutch the 
idea that the obvious and natural thing to do 
is for ail hands to change watches as they cross 
the line and keep on going with the velocity of 

the sun until they reach the meridian of Green- 
40 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


wich, from there to separate, each finding his 
way home as best he can, changing his watch 
to local time when he gets there and wakes up 
in the morning and hears the cock crow ; and 
as we have been turning out tin watches over 
in Connecticut with the velocity of the sun 
for a number of years, and retailing them for 
a dollar at a profit, the United States would 
stand pat on the watch deal and not get left in 
the general and rapid swap.” 

Your Uncle stopped here to take breath and 
to take a peep at the Admiral. I confess, while 
I was pretty certain in my own mind that there 
weren't any holes in my version of the thing, 
as I’d been pumped full all day of how it was, 
and had carefully discarded in my explanation 
all that I’d heard that sounded trashy or im- 
probable, still when it came to giving it to an 
Admiral of the navy, a Vice-Admiral at that, 
and of the British navy to boot, I was just a 
little anxious to know how it would strike him. 

The Admiral was crying, but they were tears 
of joy. 


41 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


“Mr. Allen,” he said, reaching out and tak- 
ing me by the hand, “that’s the best explana- 
tion of that point I ever heard on shipboard; 
don’t lose a minute, get that down on paper as 
quick as ever you can.” 

I thanked him and turned to go — you can’t 
write up a thing of that kind too soon after it 
happens — when the Admiral said, “And, Mr. 
Allen, send me a copy of the magazine.” 

See that you do it, boys. Vice-Admiral Sir 
Cyprian Bridge, Commander of Asiatic Squad- 
ron, British Navy, Yokohama, Japan, will 
reach him. 

Whew ! Your Uncle George has poured out 
all that liquid, molten thought and will take 
a few turns up and down the deck while it’s 
cooling in the sand. 

Half an. hour later. — I’ve taken it out of the 
sand and looked it over, boys, and it’s all right. 
If some smart Alec tries to explain to you 
that the watches would be right when they 
got to the 180th meridian, if they left Green- 
wich with Greenwich time and traveled with 
42 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


the velocity of the sun, bat him in the 
eye. 

That ‘Velocity of the sun and twelve hours 
off at 180th” I caught from the president of a 
theological seminary and it’s all right. You’ve 
got it just as I gave it to the Admiral, and the 
Admiral says it’s all right. It’s the boiled 
down, concentrated wisdom of a ship load of 
fellows, many of whom have crossed the merid- 
ian several times, and have the holes to show 
where the lost days went through as well as 
the days they’ve picked up when they crossed 
it going east, and which just fit the holes. 

I shall not trim that explanation in any way 
whatsoever. It stands just as it is, with the 
Admiral’s unqualified endorsement. 

June ioth, running into Yokohama. 

Another week has passed, dear boys, since 
the above happened and your Uncle George 
is able to be around. We had four days more 
of winter then struck the Japan current and 
delightful balmy weather. Yesterday we ran 
into a school of whales and I have another fight 


43 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


with school books. It’s the pictures this 
time. 

Your Uncle only has a 'few of his boyhood 
dreams left, and when facts from real life 
smash one of these dreams he can’t fight with 
the facts, so he takes it out in kicking at the 
pictures that wrought the dream. 

Have the geographies of to-day a picture of 
a whaling scene ? They had when I was a boy, 
some icebergs in the distance, a ship at anchor, 
some men in a row boat, being scattered to the 
four winds, while the whale smashed the boat 
into kindling wood with his tail, another boat 
coming up with a nervy sailor in the bow 
plunging a harpoon into the whale, more whales 
in the distance and the whole bunch spouting 
water in double streams a hundred feet high. 

That picture has stayed with me all these 
years, photographed, as it were, on my very 
soul, and the photograph worked in, in fast 
colors, by the licking I got because I studied 
it so hard that I didn’t have my spelling lesson 
— all kinds of “suasion” used in those days, 
44 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


boys. How your Uncle studied that picture! 
He studied it so hard that in a misty way he 
became that fellow in the bow, plunging the 
harpoon clear through the monster, and — the 
kinetoscope wasn’t invented then, but just the 
same the picture moved and the gallant spear- 
man, after the spear act, struck the attitude of 
Washington crossing the Delaware, as shown 
in the histories of that day, and then grandil- 
oquently waved his arm and gave orders that 
the sailors lying around loose in the water, 
spilled out of the other boat, be rescued. 

We sailed right into a whaling scene yester- 
day. For five miles we passed through a 
school of whales. Whales all around us spout- 
ing, the biggest kind that grow. So many of 
them that the ship had to change her course 
to avoid running into them. The chief officer 
tells me that this ship, on former occasions, 
has run into whales and that the whales always 
come off second best, but that the ship won’t 
run into one purposely. We passed, only 
a few rods away, a Japanese whaling boat with 
45 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


a captured whale alongside, and the sailors 
cutting and hoisting blubber aboard. Now the 
one thing above all others that made the geog- 
raphy whaling scene stay by me, and made me 
fairly ache, as a boy, to go out and catch whales, 
wasn’t the icebergs, the ship, or even the valor- 
ous sailor with the harpoon. It was the tre- 
mendous spouting of the whales. 

Boys, whales don’t spout water that way. 
They don’t throw the water a hundred feet 
high in a double stream. They throw it up 
in a bunch only seven or eight feet high, very 
much like the spray of a wave breaking on a 
rock, but that picture got in its work when I 
was very young, and it stuck, and another boy- 
hood dream is busted. 

June 14th, running into Shanghai. 

We make Shanghai at ten to-night and leave 
at 7 a.m. to-morrow for Hong Kong, our next 
stop. We have touched at Yokohama, Kobe 
and Nagasaki, in Japan. I’ve skimmed 
through these cities hurriedly, a few hours in 
each town, and seen strange sights and plenty 
46 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


of them. To attempt to describe them would 
take too much space in The Garcia. Will tell 
you about them when I get home. 

Your Uncle 

George. 


4 7 


The Garcia 


VOL. I. CLINTON, N. Y., AUGUST, 1901. No. 8 


Unde George’s Fourth Letter . 

Hong Kong, China, July 8, 1901. 

My Dear Boys : I got to Hong Kong June 
17th. 

Boys, it’s a solemn thing to get into as hot 
a place as Hong Kong in June. Your Uncle 
has, as the heated term approached, hied him- 
self away to the North Woods, the Maine coast, 
or up into Canada, but this is the first time 
he ever came to the torrid zone to spend the 
summer. 

Struck the town at noon. 

It was not excessively hot on the ocean as 
we sailed down from Shanghai and your Uncle 
clung to his summer underwear, and that first 
night in Hong Kong it clung to him. You know 
48 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


how it goes on, boys, when you go down swim- 
min’ and don’t have a towel, or time to wait till 
you dry, but you don’t know how it comes 
off if you’re foolish enough to have it on in 
Hong Kong in June. 

Boys, you need a derrick! 

But Au Sing Fat (my chambermaid, a very 
obliging Chinese boy) and I managed, and 
the next day I went out and ordered suitable 
clothing for the torrid zone — white shoes, 
white cork helmet and six white linen 
suits. 

They make them for you while you wait, 
and so cheap it seems to you that you blush 
when you pay the bill, and blush again 
when you learn that the Chinaman soaked 
you. The next day, to get even with 
yourself, you go to his competitor across the 
way and order six more suits for luck (a 
dozen don’t come amiss), and this time pay 
the proper price. 

Properly clothed for the torrid zone and my 
business finished in Hong Kong, I went to 


49 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


Canton, ninety miles up Pearl river, head- 
quarters for the goods I came to buy, where 
I have spent two weeks and am back in 
Hong Kong ready to sail for Manila on the 
next ship, to-morrow. 

A great town is Canton, boys. Largest city 
in China. Three or four million Chinese there, 
and only two hundred foreigners. The won- 
ders of the city can’t be described in a letter 
to The Garcia. 

I was the guest of an English firm, export 
brokers and ship owners, who attend to in- 
voicing for export and shipping to America 
the goods I buy. Mr. Halyard, the genial 
manager of this firm’s Canton quarters, took 
me to call upon a rich Chinese manufac- 
turer of matting. I had expressed my desire 
to see how the wealthy Chinese lived. 

Mr. Ching Po Foo was a most delightful 
host. Upon our arrival in sedan chairs, at his 
house, Mr. Ching ushered us into his reception 
room, half room, half garden, and immedi- 
ately his two little boys, five years old, ran to 
so 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


greet us, cordially shook hands with us and 
said “Chin, chin.” 

Through several rooms and summer gar- 
dens we were shown, the Joss room being the 
most interesting, and finally into the dining 
room, where we were served with delicious 
sponge cake, tea and fruit. I could not man- 
age the ivory chop sticks to pick up the lichees 
(a fruit the size of a plum with a thin orange- 
like skin, and a delicious pulpy inside, for 
which, however,, one must cultivate a taste, as 
for olives), which were served in dishes banked 
with flowers. With one of the little boys on 
my knee, Mr. Halyard took our photograph 
while we sat at the table, and then, much to 
my satisfaction, as a special favor to the for- 
eigner, Mr. Ching presented to us his two 
wives. 

Chinamen keep their wives in the back- 
ground, but Mr. Halyard has a pull with Mr. 
Ching. 

Takes his whole output of matting. 

Mr. Halyard speaks Chinese and worked 
his pull for me. 


5i 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


I ship goods in Mr. Halyard’s boats. 

Mr. Ching has only two wives living; num- 
ber one and number three. 

Number two died. 

I didn’t inquire into the cause of her death 
or commiserate Mr. Ching on his loss of num- 
ber two. 

Mr. Ching has wives enough. 

Fact is, one too many. 

Not that wives aren’t a good thing. 

They are, boys! 

Positively the best things on earth , but one 
at a time is enough. 

They are such good things that one is 
enough. 

Number one came mincing in on her little 
feet — her “golden lilies.” She was in ordinary 
dress. Number three didn’t have little feet, 
but was gorgeously attired in brocaded silk. 

Mr. Halyard asked the privilege of taking 
their photograph for the foreigner, whereupon 
number one left us and presently came back 
arrayed like number three, in beautiful silk. 

52 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


We were still at the table and I wanted 
them to sit at the festive board with us for 
the photograph, but they wouldn’t stand for 
that — or sit for it either, at table with men. 
Chinese wives don’t dine with men. 

Mr. Ching, the boys and I got up and Mrs. 
Ching — or the Mrs. Ching — that don’t sound 
right — ah ! I have it — the Madams Ching, sat 
down and Mr. Halyard took the picture. I 
cordially thanked Mr. Ching and the Madams 
Ching (the latter much to Mr. Ching’s sur- 
prise) for their kind hospitality and invited the 
whole bunch to come and see me if they should 
ever come to America. We all said “Chin, 
chin,” and Mr. Halyard and I took our de- 
parture. 

Mr. Ching’s house was scrupulously clean, 
inside and out, contradicting many stories on 
Chinese life I’ve read, which lead one to think 
that the Chinese are universally filthy. 

I have not mentioned the little baby girl 
in Mr. Ching’s family, brought for our in- 
spection in the nurse’s arms, a bright little tot 
53 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


of a year. As soon as she has learned to 
walk her feet will be cruelly bound. 

The next day, my work in Canton being 
over, I was the guest of an officer on the 
United States gun boat, stationed there since 
the Boxer troubles, a savage-looking double- 
turreted monitor, carrying two 12 and two 10 
inch guns and numerous smaller ones. She 
is kept at Canton for moral effect. 

We were at tiffin, when a member of the 
United States Consulate at Canton came rush- 
ing into the dining salon and announced that 
there was to be a Chinese execution at one 
o’clock. It was a quarter to one and we had 
gotten to dessert. 

Immediately the officers began to apply to 
the lieutenant-commander at the head of the 
table for permission to go ashore. They 
needn’t have been in a hurry, though, as the 
granting power proposed to go along. 

“Do you want to go, Allen?” I was asked. 
“No,” I said, “the poor Chinamen haven’t done 
anything to me ; I don’t want to see their heads 
54 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


chopped off. What are they cutting them off 
for?” I asked. 

“Robbers, river pirates.” 

“No, please excuse me,” I said. 

My host was disappointed. Those officers 
had been waiting for this member of the Con- 
sulate to put them on to an execution, that they 
might carry home the experience, and here 
was the opportunity. 

Seeing the situation, I turned to my host 
and said, “Don’t mind me, go with the crowd ; 
I’ll excuse you,” but he politely declined, where- 
upon I reversed my decision and announced 
my desire to go with them. 

We hustled off the ship into a waiting sam- 
pan boat, five of the ship’s officers, the Con- 
sulate officer and myself, and hurried across 
the shameen to the hotel, where a Chinese 
guide had eight sedan chairs, with three bear- 
ers to each chair, in waiting for us. It was 
to be a long and hurried ride, three and a half 
miles into the heart of the city. 

The Consulate officer was dropping car- 
55 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


tridges into a Colt’s army revolver and strap- 
ping it to his side. “What are you taking that 
thing for?” my host asked him. “You might 
as well have a pint of peas along as your gun. 
If we get into trouble it will only make things 
worse.” 

“Well,” the Canton member said, “I’ll have 
the satisfaction of plugging six of them if they 
try to do us.” “Why,” I said, “there’s no 
danger over there; I’ve gone all over the city 
for the past ten days alone, entirely unmo- 
lested; better leave your gun here. If we get 
in a jam, or excitement, it might go off and 
then we’ll have trouble. They won’t hurt us, 
they are as mild as sheep.” “Yes?” he replied. 
“I always take my gun with me when I go into 
that city.” 

We started off in single file, through streets 
some of them only three or four feet wide, 
some of the boulevards as wide as twelve or 
fifteen feet, all densely crowded with Chinese. 
While I had spent ten days in the city, the 
ever interesting sights along the way made me 
56 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


forget, for the time, the errand on which we 
were going. We arrived at the execution 
ground at two o’clock. Two of the officers 
who had arrived a few minutes in advance of 
the rest came to meet us as we rode in with, 
“Too late, boys, it’s all over!” and I had a 
feeling of relief ; but the guide assured us that 
there would be an execution that afternoon. 

The execution ground of Canton ! Who has 
not read of it with its frightful sacrifice of 
human life? No battlefield on earth can boast 
of so many slain as that bit of ground has wit- 
nessed. As we think of our elaborate execu- 
tion machinery in the United States and the 
fuss and feathers surrounding the meting out 
of simple justice to a criminal convicted of 
murder and sentenced to be executed, it’s hard 
to understand from description the simplicity 
and directness of the Chinese mode. 

In the heart of the city a bit of ground 
twenty feet wide and about two hundred long, 
lined with dwelling houses, shut in with large 
wooden gates — that is the simple description 
57 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


of the place. Here the heads of criminals 
are chopped off, or they are killed by slow 
strangulation, or by the “Ling Chee,” which 
interpreted means “death of a hundred cuts.” 
It is done by tying the victim on a wooden 
cross and slowly killing by one hundred knife 
cuts, this punishment being inflicted only for 
killing one’s father or mother. At other times 
this gruesome ground is used as a pottery 
works — the “potter’s field” with a vengeance. 

Large earthern vessels, drying in the sun, 
covered the ground as we rode in. Soon a 
few soldiers arrived and gave orders that a 
space be cleared, which was done by piling the 
pots one on top of the other. Aside from our 
party there were about two hundred Chinese 
spectators, some of them the laborers in the 
pottery works, and the rest, those who lived 
in the houses adjoining the ground and who 
thus had access to it. 

Until four o’clock we waited, when with 
great theatrical effect the executioner, accom- 
panied by two apprentices, came in on the run, 
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TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


bearing several swords encased in canvas 
bags. 

With great gusto, the knives were drawn 
from the bags and laid out upon a plank sup- 
ported by the earthern pots. For about five 
minutes the executioner strutted up and down 
the ground, when, with a shout and a whirl, in 
rushed twenty-four coolies, bearing in baskets 
(such as are used in Canton for carrying pigs 
and refuse), slung on poles, twelve criminals 
condemned to execution. 

The crowd of Chinese spectators set up a 
delighted shout ; the coolies dropped their bur- 
dens with a thud and turned the wretches 
sprawling on the ground as if they were so 
much dirt. Their hands were tied behind them 
and their feet were manacled with log chains, 
but they scrambled to their knees as best they 
could and bent their heads forward in readiness 
for the executioner’s sword. At this juncture 
four more coolies came rushing in, bearing two 
more criminals, and the Chinese spectators set 
up another delighted yell — fourteen to serve at 
59 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


death’s banquet instead of only twelve ! These 
were dumped out of the baskets and they were 
all arranged kneeling in a double row as two 
would walk abreast. Their queues were done 
up in knots at the top of their heads and 
strips of common brown paper, folded to the 
size of about two and a half by twenty-four 
inches, on which their accusations, names, resi- 
dences and death sentences were written, were 
stuck inside their jackets at the back of their 
necks, reaching up fifteen inches above their 
heads. 

Quickly an officer of the law ran down the 
double row, snatched the death warrants out of 
their jackets and all was ready for the execu- 
tion. 

Selecting a sword with a blade five inches 
wide and twenty long, the executioner stepped 
to the head of the rows and with a quick, single 
stroke struck off the foremost wretch’s head, 
before the eyes of the waiting thirteen. With 
a kick, he sent the body forward, and down 
that double row of kneeling men the monster 
60 


Hi 



Struck off the foremost wretch's head before the eyes of the waiting thirteen. 

Page 60. 






TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


went, and in one and one-half minutes he had 
chopped off fourteen heads. Each time, as the 
knife came down, the Chinese spectators gave 
a delighted yell. 

Wiping his sword on the pantaloons of the 
last victim, the executioner held it up for sale. 
Thirty Mexican dollars he asked for it; one 
of the boys bought it for eight. He pocketed 
the cash and coolly commenced gathering up 
the heads of the slain, throwing them in a 
pile, as if they were so many pumpkins; and 
two officers began to pry the three-quarter- 
inch iron rings off their ankles. 

The lieutenant-commander and I stood at 
the foot of that gruesome row of slain. With 
a shudder I looked at the executioner’s one and 
one-half minutes’ work, and turning to my 
companion, said, “Commander, if justice is 
satisfied, I am ; let’s get out of this !” 

We walked to the gate enclosing the ground 
and the question that occurred to both of us 
was: “How are we going to do it?” The 
street was packed with a howling mob of 
61 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


Chinese. The gates were thrown open for 
us to pass out and the Chinese guards beat 
the crowd back, striking them in their faces 
with fists and bamboo sticks. I thought of the 
Consulate member and his little gun and de- 
cided that the warship’s 12-inch guns would 
better suit the occasion if we should have 
trouble. 

“We’ll get our crowd together,” the com- 
mander said, “and all start at once.” Two 
abreast, the commander and I ahead, we 
ranged up before the gates, which in the mean- 
time had been closed. Signaling the guards 
to open them again, the commander gave the 
order to move, and as the waters of the Red 
Sea parted and let the Israelites go through 
dry shod, so that mob of Chinese parted and 
we went through like a steel wedge driven 
through soft cheese, to the place where our 
chairs had been taken after bringing us into 
the ground. 

Truth compels me to state it that way, boys. 
No thrilling adventures here ; but surely you’ve 
62 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


had blood enough in this story, without asking 
for more. The whole affair was blood-cur- 
dling, and I noticed that it affected the men of 
blood and war, who served at Pekin last 
summer in the thick of the fight, quite as much 
as myself, a rank civilian. We all decided that 
nothing could induce us to witness another. 
As for myself, it was not the actual striking 
off of the heads, the ghastly spectacle of four- 
teen headless men weltering in their gore, nor 
the gruesome sight of the pile of heads that 
sent the supreme shudder of horror through 
me. It was the rushing in with the condemned, 
borne in pig baskets, by men of their own kind ; 
the dumping them on the ground, and the 
manacled wretches obediently struggling to 
their knees, to get into position to receive 
their death blow. As we got through the 
crowd and reached our chairs, it chanced that 
my coolies got me chaired first, so I led the van 
out of the city which had lost all interest for 
me. 

The ghastly scene stayed with me and I was 
63 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


oppressed with the awfulness of human ex- 
istence. There was a pain in my heart and a 
wonder in my mind as to what God intended 
to do, ultimately, with one-third of his earthly 
family — one-third of the living human race, 
here in China. I had just seen fourteen of his 
children, men made in his own image, sent into 
eternity without the benefits of clergy or an 
introduction to their Maker. I gave the conun- 
drum up — it’s too big for your Uncle George 
— and the next day bought a Chinese news- 
paper, the only one in Canton that made any 
mention of the affair. 

Through the courtesy of Mr. Ching Poy 
Woo, interpreter for the United States Con- 
sulate here at Hong Kong, I append a trans- 
lation of the article. 

Please note the brevity, the simplicity, the 
directness, the lack of all newspaper sensation- 
alism, in this description of the execution of 
fourteen men for stealing, in China. Compare 
it with the accounts in our own journals — yel- 
low or otherwise — of some one man in the 
64 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


United States, going to a death justly merited, 
full of beefsteak and choice viands (these fel- 
lows looked half starved), and smothered with 
bouquets and sentimental verses. Y 11 only re- 
mark that “one-half of the world doesn’t know 
how the other half lives” — or dies. I’ve tried 
to show you a little of this half. 

The following is a translation of the article 
appearing in the Printing Bureau of the Peace- 
ful and Refined , on July 2, 1901, at Canton, 
China. 

******** 
EXECUTION OF CRIMINALS BY THE NAMPAI 
AND PUN-YU MAGISTRATES. 

On July 1, the Nampai Magistrates in compliance 
with instructions from the high authorities, took from 
jail twelve condemned robbers entrusted to his custody 
by the police department, viz. : Yip Ah Shun, Wong Sair 
Kivi, Chan Au Tuck, Lee An Wu, Yeung Ah Mee, 
Wong Ah Sen, Yip Ah Wei, Sung Ah Cheung, Mak Ah 
Fun, Lo Ah Gay, Lee Ah Git and Lau Ah Bing, who 
upon being clearly identified, were then bound and taken 
under military surveillance to the Execution Ground 
and were beheaded. At the time of the condemned 
65 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


passing the Magisterial Stand, the Magistrate closely 
observed the condemned Yeung Ah Mee, and then and 
there decided, that, he being very young as to age and 
genteel as to countenance, it is deeply to be deplored 
that he had become a robber. “Alas ! what is the 
reason?” When the criminal Lau Ah Bing passed The 
Magisterial Stand he again resorted to craftiness in not 
owning his own name, whereupon the Magistrate ren- 
dered the verdict that the Criminal even at this juncture 
is disowning his name, but it avails him nothing as it 
is altogether too late and it only tends to show that he 
is relentlessly depraved. 

******** 

The Pun-Yu Magistrate also on that day respectfully 
applied for death warrants for two robbers, namely, 
Kong Tia Tong and Leong Au Bui who had been con- 
demned by the high authorities to be decapitated. After 
having been brought out and identified, they were at 
once bound and under the surveillance of military offi- 
cers, were taken to the Execution Ground and be' 
headed. 

Good-bye, boys, I’ll write you from Manila. 

Your Uncle 

George. 

P. S. — As I read the translation of that 
66 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


Chinese newspaper account, boys, and call to 
mind the fun and gayety the scene afforded to 
the Chinese spectators, it seems a strange irony 
of fate that two of the names of the con- 
demned were Mak Au Fun and Lo Ah Gay, 
and that they both came together and it all took 
place in the “potter’s field.” 


67 


The Garcia 

VOL. I. CLINTON, N. Y., SEPTEMBER, 1901. No. 9 


Owing, probably, to Uncle George’s 
prolonged trip among the smaller islands 
of the Philippines, his letter has failed to 
reach us in time for our September 
Garcia , but the Cedarine Allen Co., for 
whom Uncle George is advertising man- 
ager, has loaned us cuts and permission 
to publish this little advertising booklet, 
“Among the Filipinos,” which Uncle 
George got up for his house. 

We think it so good that we are pub- 
lishing it and not charging advertising 
rates for the space it takes. 


68 



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69 


See The Man And The Ox. 

The Man Is On The Cart. 

His Name Is Un-cle George. 

Can He Make The Ox Go ? 

Is It Not A Strange Look-ing Ox ? 

It Is Al-so Call-ed A Car-i-bon Or Wat-er Buf-fa-lo. 

The Ox And Cart Are In The Mud. 

Is The Road We See A Road Out In The Coun-try ? 

Oh No ! It Is One Of The Best Streets In Da-gu- 
pan And Gives A Ve-ry Good I-dea Of What Kind 
Of A Town Da-gu-pan Is. 

Da-gu-pan Is The Se-cond Ci-ty Of Im-port-ancc 
On The Is-land Of Lu-zon. 

It Is The Ter-mi-nus Of The Ma-nil-a And Da- 
gu-pan Rail-road. 

It Is Three Hun-dred Years Old. 

Have Not The Fil-i-pi-no Peo-ple Done Well To 
Build Such A Nice Ci-ty In Three Hun-dred Years ? 

Is It Not A SHAME To Op-press These Peo-ple 
With A-mer-i-can Civ-i-li-za-tion ? 


70 




71 


V 


\ 


Ah ! What Have We Here ? 

Un-cle George Is On The Ox’s Back. 

Is He Still In Da-gu-pan ? 

Oh No ! He Is Now Three Miles Out Of Da-gu- 
pan In The Jun-gle, And The Roads Are So Bad He 
Can Not Go With The Cart And Must Ride On The 
Ox’s Back or Walk. 

Has Un-cle George Caught a Fish ? 

No, Un-cle George Has Not Caught A Fish ? He 
Has Las-so-ed A Wild Ig-or-ot-te Chief. The Ig- 
or-ot-tes Are Tribes Of Wild Men Who In-fest The 
Jun-gles And Woods A-round Da-gu-pan. 

Is Un-ele George A Las-so-er ? Oh Yes ! Un-cle 
George Is A Las-so-er From Way Back. When He 
Was A Boy On The Farm He Prac-tic-ed Las-so-ing 
So Much That All The Calves Had Sore Necks. 

If The Wild Man Does Not Stop Pull-ing He Will * 
Have A Sore Neck Too. 

How Did Un-cle George Come To Have A Las-so 
With Him ? 


72 



73 





He Took It With Him To Tie The Ox So It 
Could Graze At Night. 

Oh Dear ! Oh Dear ! Oh Dear ! 

Will Un-cle George Shoot The Poor Wild Ig-or- 
ot-te Chief ? 

Well That De-pends. 

Un-cle George Has A Scout With Him Who 
Speaks The Ig-or-ot-te Lan-guage, And Who Car- 
ries Un-cle George’s Cam-e-ra. 

The Scout Has Or-ders From Un-cle George To 
Pho-to-graph Any Thing, Of In-ter-est, A-long 
The Way. 

The Scout Is Now Aim-ing The Cam-e-ra At The 
Wild Man And Tell-ing Him If He Does Not Stand 
Still And Look Pleas-ant Un-cle George Will BLOW 
HIS OLD HEAD OFF, And In-ter-lard-ing His 
Re-marks With Ot-her Words Which Will Scorch 
Holes In A Blank-et. 

The Scout Used To Drive Ar-my Mules And Is 
Ad-dict-ed To The Use Of Harsh Lan-guage. 


74 



“Stand Still And Look Pleas-ant.” 
Olcl-er Peo-ple May Read On The Next Page. 




75 


No Oth-er 

Furn-i-ture Pol-ish 
Is So Good As 
CEDARINE 
Furn-i-ture 

Polish. 

Do Not For-get 

The Name 
C-E-D-A-R-I-N-E 
Use Cedarine 
And The Au-thor 

Will be 

Your 

Un-cle George. 



The Garcia 


VOL. 1. CLINTON, N. Y., OCTOBER, 1901. No. 10 


Unde George Is with Us. 

Well, Uncle George is home. We 
were a delighted lot of Garcia boys to 
see him. Mixed with our joy at having 
Uncle back again was a feeling of con- 
sternation in the breasts of the editors 
of The Garcia. 

We wouldn’t think of finding fault 
with Uncle George, but — well, the fact 
of the matter is, we were just a little bit 
put to it to know what to do — just how 
to fulfill our contract with our subscribers. 

We went before the public with some- 
thing of a flourish last May. Told it that 
Uncle George was going around the 
world as a special correspondent for The 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


Garcia. To have our special correspond- 
ent going around the world and dropping 
us letters from the remote corners of the 
earth seemed to us like a pretty good 
stroke of enterprise. 

And it was, too. 

And Uncle didn’t fail us. 

He “ got there” once a month with a 
letter to The Garcia . We got to de- 
pending on him for copy. We were 
looking for another letter from him from 
Calcutta, or Bombay, or Jerusalem, when, 
instead of a letter, we got him. 

Don’t think we aren’t glad to see him. 
We are. But we can’t print Uncle 
George. We told him so and asked him 
how we were going to square ourselves 
with our subscribers. 

He looked at us kind of funny, and asked 
whether we would call it square and let 
him off on the deal if he would deed us 
his house and lot on College Street and 
78 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


throw in a gold mine or two in the Philip- 
pines on which he held an option ? 

We told him we didn’t know what he 
meant by that, but if he was trying to 
joke about it, that it was no joking 
matter. 

We told him that we had jumped our 
magazine from eight to twelve pages, 
and had to fill it up with something — 
that we needed copy. Then he looked 
solemn and suggested, as time for our 
October Garcia was getting short, that 
we place an order by cable with Kip- 
ling, or Salisbury, or Marie Corelli, or 
Jerome K. Jerome for an article for our 
October Garcia , or, better still, that we 
dash off a few spicy articles ourselves to 
fill up. 

We told him that he wasn’t sticking 
to the question under discussion (we 
learned that from Uncle George himself. 
He has jacked us up more than once 
79 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


when we strayed from our subject in our 
debates), the question was: “How were 
we to square ourselves with our subscri- 
bers and give them articles from Uncle 
George, on a tour around the world, 
when he had only gone half around.” 

He admitted that it was quite a prob- 
lem and then he strayed from the point 
again, and remarked something about it 

being expensive traveling in Oriental 
countries. 

It began to look as if he was going 
to throw us on our own resources and 
we began to think. 

We asked him if he would tell our 
Club about his trip at our next meeting 
and he said he would. We aren’t worry, 
ing any more. 

Our program for last Saturday night 
was a talk from Uncle George on his 
personal experiences on his last trip. 

We made a deal with a rapid stenog- 
80 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


rapher and Uncle talked a streak. The 
stenographer took it down and we have 
material enough for The Garcia for sev- 
eral months to come. 

We publish here a part of Uncle 
George’s experiences just as he gave 
them to the Garcia Club, and shall pub- 
lish monthly what he told us just as the 
stenographer caught it until the material 
is used up. 

“ ‘Boys,’ Uncle George began. Tm glad to 
see you. You’re a nice healthy looking lot of 
boys. As my grandfather used to tell me, 
when I was a boy, ‘if you behave yourself as 
well as you look, you’ll be all right.’ I notice 
you’ve cut your debate and almost everything 
else out of your program for this evening, and 
have invited me to be the whole show. 

Well I’m flattered but a little disappointed. 
I’d my mind made up to listen to some ringing 
Garcia boy eloquence this evening. Of course 
I’d scarcely recognize it, you’ll have improved 
81 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


so in the past five or six months. But it’ll be 
my turn next week to listen to you. 

As you know I got to Hong Kong on the 
17th of June. As you don’t know, your Uncle 
was scared stiff inside of an hour after he got 
there — took me three days to get over it. 
Never wanted to go home so bad in my life. 
As this is a true story I’m telling you and no 
romance, when I was scared I’ll tell you so, and 
when I wasn’t I’ll tell you so, which the latter 
was mostly when there wasn’t any danger, or 
none that I knew of. I can hold my own with 
any one at being brave when there is no dan- 
ger, but in Hong Kong I was scared, rattled, 
and wanted to go home. 

They had the black plague when I got to 
Hong Kong. They were dying between fifty 
and sixty a day with it. Europeans were dying 
with it — something unusual. Heretofore 
Europeans have rarely taken it. 

I bought a paper and read the record of 
deaths. The deaths among the Chinese were 
more than the cases reported. 

82 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


'Well to-day, dead the next. Well at noon, 
dead at night. Seventy thousand Chinese left 
Hong Kong, scared out by the plague/ was a 
sample of the way the reports read. 

Didn’t blame ’em. I’d have left too if I’d had 
any friends in the country. I walked up to the 
clerk in the Hong Kong hotel, where I was 
Stopping, and asked him : 'What are the symp- 
toms of the black plague?’ 

'Sore throat, feverish, tired feeling, bad taste 
in the mouth, dizziness,’ were some of the 
symptoms he named. 

I was scared, I could hardly swallow, I felt 
feverish. I was tired, very tired. Mouth 
tasted like a green persimmon and I was dizzy. 
Oh! I had all the symptoms of black plague 
then and there All this happened within an 
hour after I struck Hong Kong. I asked the 
clerk what was a good thing to stave it off. 
He said, ‘Keep cool and don’t think about it.’ 

I got hot, thought about it and got worse. 
Next day I didn’t feel so bad and the third day 
in Hong Kong I wasn’t scared at all. Had 
83 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


gotten used to it — get used to almost anything, 
boys. 

The third day in Hong Kong I was taking 
tiffin at the Hong Kong Club with our consul 
general, a United States navy paymaster and 
the Standard Oil Company’s representative, 
who were stationed at Hong Kong. I told 
them I was going to Canton on the night boat. 
Canton is ninety miles from Hong Kong up the 
Pearl river. ‘Go to Canton !’ they said, ‘black 
plague is awful in Canton. The reports are that 
they are dying two thousand a day up there.’ 

‘Yes?’ I said, ‘that’s what they say over at 
the hotel but I’ve got to go to Canton.’ Came 
to China to go to Canton. After tiffin I left 
them to get ready to take the evening boat for 
Canton and got there the next morning. Can- 
ton had a clean bill of health. There was no 
black plague there, and that’s a fair sample of 
the reliance you can place on the reports you 
get of the state of affairs existing in any town, 
outside of the one you happen to be in, in any 
Oriental country I have ever travelled in. Can- 
84 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


ton, boys, is the most wonderful city, in many 
respects, I have ever visited. It has an esti- 
mated population of four million Chinese, while 
the foreign population is only two hundred and 
fifty individuals. 

That fact is peculiar. No other city in the 
world of its size, or half its size, has so small 
a foreign population. The missionaries have 
been in Canton for a hundred years trying to 
preach Christian civilization into the Chinese. 
The theory of the church is that the heart must 
be educated, that the simple gospel story must 
be preached, and they have preached it. And 
China hasn’t budged, to speak of. Ninety-five 
per cent, of her population are living on three 
cents a day. When a man comes direct from 
American civilization where ninety-five per 
cent, of the population are living in comfort, 
and is set down in the midst of China and finds 
a nation of plodding industrious people, all 
willing to work, struggling for that three cents, 
his first question is: ‘What’s needed to jar 
them ?’ 


85 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


One hundred years of gospel truth hasn’t 
done it. 

I think your uncle is a peculiar combination. 
Certain it is, I didn’t run across just such an- 
other pilgrim on my journey. 

I was a business man, ‘missionarily inclined,’ 
as my friends in business put it. That’s an 
unusual combination in China. 

There are three thousand Christian mission- 
aries in China and fourteen thousand foreign- 
ers (aside from the soldiery) who are not mis- 
sionaries. These fourteen thousand are in 
China for self and pelf, to make their pile and 
go back to their respective countries to enjoy 
it, exactly what the Chinese we find in America 
are in America for. I belonged to the fourteen 
thousand class. I went to China commercially 
bent, to make money out of the Chinese. To 
buy goods in a cheap country to sell them in 
America, which is a dear country. 

My mission in China was a business propo- 
sition and the only philanthropy there was in 
it was to get gain. I naturally found myself 
86 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


thrown among my class, and if there are any 
among that class in China, who believe in mis- 
sionaries, uphold them and take their part, it 
was not my good fortune to meet them. I 
don’t say they’re not there, I only speak of 
my own personal experience. I didn’t meet 
them. I believe in the missionary cause, be- 
cause I believe in humanity and I believe that 
someway, somehow, sometime, God Almighty, 
through the instrumentality of men who be- 
lieve and live the gospel story, will lift China 
and the rest of the Orient out of the slough of 
despond and the degradation of grasping, gri- 
ping, grinding poverty, ignorance and super- 
stition it is now in, to something better and 
higher. 

It is to do this, that the missionaries are in 
China. Their lives are spent in Oriental coun- 
tries for this purpose. I found myself, when 
discussing missionaries with my class, taking 
the part of missionaries, defending them, and 
contrasting the motive that brought them to 
China, with the motive that brought us there, 
87 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


and giving to the missionaries the credit for 
the higher motives. I hunted up missionaries 
and talked with them. Most of them I found 
good fellows, broad minded, and all that I 
found I judged to be sound hearted. I asked 
them what they thought about it, ‘weren’t they 
discouraged?’ They said they weren’t. 

If I were to find any fault with the mission- 
aries at all, I’d say they aren’t discouraged 
enough. They take the situation too compla- 
cently. They’re deceiving themselves with the 
belief that eventually they’ll Christianize China 
while her population is living on three cents 
per day. Personally, I don’t believe they ever 
will. A man can be a Christian on three cents 
a day. A few of the four hundred million 
Chinese have tried it and were brilliant suc- 
cesses as the martyrs during the Boxer troubles 
proved. But our missionaries in China 
wouldn’t be Christians on it long. They’d 
soon be angels, those who wouldn’t throw up 
the job. White men can’t live on three cents 
a day. Many of them wouldn’t find grace 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


enough in the Book from Genesis to Revela- 
tion to hold them to it, — at three cents a day. 
They ride around on the backs of men in China 
and preach : ‘My yoke is easy and my burden 
is light/ and the Chinaman ‘no can savy how.’ 

What China needs is twentieth century in- 
dustrial progress mixed with the gospel story, 
about half and half, I should judge. If she 
can be made to take the combination, she’ll pull 
out and get to going to the good, and one 
missionary will then be able to do the work of 
ten, under present conditions. But I was in 
China to buy Chinese goods. The remarks 
I’ve made are only to show you how the situa- 
tion struck me as I journeyed through. The 
thoughts that come to a man, as he goes along, 
are a part of a man’s experience and that’s 
what you’ve asked me for and what I’m giving 
you. I wrote you about the execution of four- 
teen criminals that I saw in Canton. I left 
the town, came back to Hong Kong and took 
a ship for Manila. 


89 


The Garcia 


VOL. I. CLINTON, N. Y., NOVEMBER, 1901. No. 11 


Continuation of Unde George’s Address 
to the Garcia Club. 

It’s only a six hundred mile sail to Manila 
from Hong Kong and there are some very 
good boats plying between those ports. 

The feelings that came to me as I neared the 
Philippine Islands were deep, and broad, and 
long. I’d been filled pretty full of fairy tales 
of those wonderful isles and of the Filipinos, 
who were being oppressed by an ambitious 
power, and I was going to see with my own 
eyes what a big thing we’d got. I was pre- 
pared to be sorry for the noble Filipino, who 
had lost his land through the fortunes of war ; 
but any little qualms of conscience I may have 
had along that line, were swallowed up in 
visions of the glorious land that was now 
90 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


ours with its timber propositions, and mineral 
propositions, and agricultural propositions. 
Oh the goodly land, that I’d read about, and 
heard about, and had spent my good hard cash 
and precious time to come to see — I had to sit 
on my feelings to keep them down. 

I’d heard big men tell about those Islands, at 
Chamber of Commerce meetings, at banquets 
and at political gatherings; great big fellows 
who ought to know what they were talking 
about if they didn’t. Some of these great big 
fellows had been there and seen them, and 
I supposed, of course, they knew what they 
were talking about. 

I think so yet. 

But after spending fifty-five days in the 
Philippines, after riding the length of the only 
railroad they’ve got, sailing the length of the 
archipelago on the things they call steamboats, 
after hiking over and riding over them 
on horse back, bull back and man back, 
I whistle softly to myself and say: ‘Don’t be 
too hard on the boys, they were only doing the 


91 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


best they could for the fellows who paid their 
expenses there and back and a salary for their 
time. ’ My enthusiasm for the Philippine 
Islands was dampened upon landing in Manila 
and seeing the noble Filipino where he grows 
— it was the rainy season. The noble Filipino 
is noble only in the songs of a handful of men 
from Boston. 

I won’t say there are no American enthusi- 
asts over those Islands even now in the Philip- 
pines, There are. But that’s not surprising. 
Dickens tells of a fellow who enthused over a 
meal of turnips and water. I met some of those 
enthusiasts myself and ran down some of their 
stories. I’ll tell you about them before I get 
through. The majority, however, of the Amer- 
icans in the Philippines express their feelings 
about the Islands with a word that begins with 
D and ends with n. They don’t write that way 
for publication though, because the Americans 
now in the Islands are mostly soldiers, and in 
the same boat as the chaps who had their ex- 
penses paid to go to see them and got a salary 
for their time. 


92 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


I bought a ticket in Hong Kong that read : 
‘ One first-class passage from Hong Kong to 
Manila. ’ I paid sixty dollars, Mex., for it. 
I expected, of course, to be landed in Manila, 
my ticket read that way. But I wasn’t. I was 
set down in Manila Bay, three miles from 
Manila. I had the privilege of swimming 
ashore with my baggage or paying four dollars 
to be taken to Manila in a tough little boat. I 
can swim pretty good, but I took the boat. The 
fact .that I can swim pretty good was a comfort 
to me many times, before I shook the mould of 
the Philippine Islands off my feet — it was so 
damp in Manila that I could pick mushrooms 
off my shoes every morning. 

I was landed at the Custom House, at the 
dock, where the American flag would have been 
flying, but for the fact that it was being rained 
on so vigorously that it clung to the flag staff, 
and looked like a 97-pound bather coming out 
of the surf at Atlantic City wearing a rented 
suit built for a 300-pound man. But it was the 
American flag and I was glad to see it, sozzling 
93 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


or waving. I was an American citizen travel- 
ling from one part of America to another as I 
supposed, as Dewey had taken the port more 
than three years previously in the name of the 
great American nation, and had set our flag up 
there, to say nothing of that twenty million 
dollars we had paid to Spain for what the 
whole world recognized as hers, taking her re- 
ceipt in full for the Islands. However, I had in 
my baggage a dozen watches made in the 
United States by an American manufacturer, a 
friend of mine, who asked me to take them to 
Manila for him and find out what opportunities 
there were to sell his watches in our new pos- 
sessions. I had to pay a duty of over 200 per 
cent, ad valorem on those watches. I sold them 
in Manila for a little less than the duty 
amounted to. My friend isn’t trying to open 
up a trade with the Philippine Islands on his 
watches. Not yet. The field isn’t ripe yet for 
his American watches in that portion of Amer- 
ica. We still pay Spanish duties on imports 
into the Philippine Islands and on exports from 
94 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


the Philippine Islands into the United States. 
We haven’t got around to take them off yet. 
We seem to be running after that street car after 
we’ve caught it, and as one of our papers puts 
it : ‘We don’t know whether the flag follows 
the constitution or the constitution follows the 
flag, or the flagstitution follows the const, or 
the constiflagtion follows the stute and we’re 
all mixed up, ’ but that isn’t so surprising after 
you’ve seen the Philippine Islands. 

A worse mixed up mess of a country it would 
be hard to imagine. It would be hard to men- 
tion what is not needed to make it a desirable 
place to live in. The chief need of all is labor. 
Order will eventually come out of chaos if 
American capital and genius are given a chance 
and encouragement. Our present policy is: 
‘ The Philippine Islands for the Filipinos, ’ and 
the Filipinos will make about as much out of 
the Philippine Islands, as the North American 
Indians would have made out of the United 
States, if, a hundred years or so ago our policy 
had been, ‘ North America for the North Amer- 
95 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


ican Indians. ’ A man who won’t work, who 
has no ambition, who only wants enough to ex- 
ist on, is a monstrosity. We have them in the 
United States. They are tramps, hoboes, a 
fester on the body politic. We have only a few 
in comparison to our population and they don’t 
cut much figure. But find a nation where the 
vast majority are of that class and you have a 
tramp, a hobo nation, and that’s what the 
Filipino nation is. They have made no effort 
worthy of the name to make anything of them- 
selves or their country. 

We sometimes hear people wish that they 
might live in primitive conditions and be noth- 
ing but happy. If you want to see a practical 
outcome of that kind of living you’ll find it in 
the Philippines. Degradation, squalor, poverty, 
is the result ; an infinitely worse condition than 
any kind of animals will get into when left 
merely to exist, because God never intended 
that man should live that way. Man’s destiny 
is a struggle up to something higher and better, 
or to sink below the level of the brute creation. 

96 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


Whether it’s Spain’s fault that the Filipinos are 
where they are, or the Filipinos’ fault, is not 
the important question. They are where they 
are and the United States has taken the situa- 
tion on its shoulders and a good share of ‘ the 
white man’s burden ’ we will find it. That we 
will be a bigger, grander, better nation for the 
doing of it I have no doubt, and be richly paid 
in every way in the onward march of a world’s 
scheme, but it will get away from us if we don’t 
handle it in a practical way. 

The average voter in the United States who 
has, up to the present time, cheerfully licked 
revenue stamps to pay for our missionary ven- 
ture in the far east, will begin to look for a 
fruition of the hopes and promises held out to 
him as a result of taking the Philippine Islands 
into our scheme, and if nothing more is ac- 
complished than the policing of those Islands 
with thirty or forty thousand troops, he will 
begin to get tired and wish that Dewey had 
never gone gunning after those little tin boxes 
of war boats in Manila Bay. They couldn’t 
97 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


have done Spain much good nor us much dam- 
age, when you come to see the boats. I didn’t 
see them all, only two of them, the best two. 
The ones we raised and Hobson refitted. For 
sentimental purposes I guess. I don’t know 
what else. 

The average voter will begin to wish that 
the Philippine Islands were in Bungay, or that 
we could trade them off for an equal amount of 
ocean waves, somewhere, anywhere, if we don’t 
get to proving that the Islands are a good 
thing. 

In their present state of development they’re 
of no use to us. The Spooner bill has blocked 
all industrial progress. The exclusion of Chi- 
nese labor from the Philippine Islands is a 
grievous blunder. No matter how good the re- 
sources of these Islands are they are valueless 
without labor. The Filipino may *work for t 
Americans who attempt to develop the Islands. 
He has been a dismal failure working for him- 
self or any one else who has ever tried to get 
him to work. Not in this century will white 
98 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


men go from this country or Europe to be 
laborers in the Philippines. They are better off 
where they are. It’s a question if they could 
stand the climate when they got there, should 
they attempt it. Chinese can, will and want to 
go there to work. But we have put up the bars 
— to keep the sheep out and the goats in. 

No one helped me to the above conclusions. 
I arrived at them quite unaided after fifty-five 
days spent there looking around to see what 
were the opportunities for making money out 
of the wonderful resources that I had read and 
heard about in the Philippines. 

After I got through the customs house and 
paid more than twice as much for duty on a 
dozen watches as I could buy the watches for in 
New York I looked around for some means to 
get to a hotel. A swarm of Filipinos loitered 
t around a**d I secured one of them to go and 
hunt up a conveyance. In an hour he came 
back with a grin and a carrameto, a horrible 
two-wheeled vehicle drawn by one dilapidated 
pony. I was dropped out in Manila Bay at 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


8 a.m. I got to my hotel at 2 p.m., which is 
quick work for Manila. 

A decent dinner at that hotel and a look at 
the rooms which were not fit for habitation by 
a self-respecting traveling man — the rates were 
only $5 a day, so what could you expect — a 
change to another, the best hotel in Manila, and 
tough at that, where the rates were from $7 to 
$15 a day, and 6 o’clock had come and it was 
the evening of my first day in Manila. 


100 


The Garcia 


VOL. I. CLINTON, N. Y., DECEMBER, 1901. No. 12 


Continuation of Unde George's Address 
to the Garcia Club . 

There is not a good hotel in Manila. There 
are several that advertise themselves as such, 
but the only first-class thing to be found, in con- 
nection with any of them, is the rates they 
charge. Their rates are strictly first-class. 
Think of a land of perpetual summer and no 
green peas except canned ones — canned 
peas, canned tomatoes, canned asparagus, 
all from the United States. Whether the 
climate will not grow these vegetables or 
whether there is not enterprise enough in the 
Islands to raise them, I can’t tell. I was not 
particularly interested in their ‘ garden sass 9 
resources. If these things grow or can be 
grown there, I am prepared to state that the 

IOI 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


hotels, with a rate from $7 to $15 Mexican, 
per day, didn’t furnish them to their guests. 
The only butter I saw was canned butter from 
Australia ; the only milk, condensed milk from 
America. The only meat was canned or 
smoked meat, also from America, with the ex- 
ception of chickens and caribou beef, the latter 
tough, strong and coarse. Bananas of an indif- 
ferent variety were furnished, but the only fruit 
chat had a real fruit taste was oranges, from 
California. 

The laundry question was more aggravating 
than the menu. The hotels positively refused 
to have anything to do with a guest’s laundry. 
Their excuse, to myself, was they could not and 
would not undertake so great a responsibility. 
So the wayfaring man was at the mercy of the 
natives, whose language he could not speak. 
The pidgin English of China, easily acquired 
after a short sojourn in the Flowery Kingdom, 
is of no use among the Chinese of the Philip- 
pines, who invariably speak Spanish. There 

are Chinese laundrymen in Manila, who do fair 
102 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


work, but I was not successful in getting one 
and had to depend upon the Filipinos, and that 
Filipino laundry was fearfully and wonderfully 
done. As pidgin English availed me nothing, 
I took a day off and learned a little ‘ caribou 
Spanish, ’ enough to get the Filipinos to under- 
take my washing and to ‘ bless them ’ when 
they brought some of it back. If they are not 
wearing, at this time, sundry articles of my ap- 
parel in the Philippine Islands, it’s because they 
have worn them out. But for a prejudice 
I have in favor of wearing clothes, I re- 
gretted that they brought back what they did. 
They didn’t pretend to get them clean. Their 
way was to take them down to the river — hard 
water and partly salt — souse them in, take them 
out, lay them on boards and with stones knock 
them full of holes and bat the buttons off. 
Then they smoothed them out with a plank. 
They charged 8 cents to do that to a handker- 
chief and 1 6 cents to do it to a pair of socks. 

They have a street car in Manila. In a ten 
days’ sojourn there, I saw it five times; from 
103 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


{which I gather that they run it every other day, 
{which is once in two days too often. Such an 
excuse for a street car ought not to be allowed 
inside the city limits. It is drawn by disreputa- 
ble-looking little ponies, hitched to it with 
ropes, and is such a tough affair that no self- 
respecting white man would be caught riding 
in it. Their other means of transit is the car- 
rameto. None but the nation which invented 
the Spanish inquisition, could produce such a 
vehicle. The seat is directly above the axletree 
and you have to clamber in over the wheel. 
Visit Manila during the rainy and consequently 
the muddy season. Take a ride in a carrameto. 
By the time you’re in, over that wheel, dressed 
in the conventional white, if your name isn’t 
* Mud ’ I’m a Dutchman. After you have 
jolted along for a mile or so you feel for your 
liver on top of your head and decide that you’d 
rather walk, which you do, and when you get 
back to your hotel you put your clothes in the 
wash, not with any hopes of getting them clean, 

but to give your dusky laundress a chance to 
104 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


distribute the mud through them more evenly 
and knock off the button she missed the last 
time. The hotel at which I stopped had a livery 
in connection and their charge was $5.00 to 
hitch up and draw one around the corner in a 
carriage. 

,Up to the time of my leaving Manila, we had 
made it a clean city, built an ice plant and raised 
prices. 

I had no trouble in getting an audience with 
Judge Taft, the first Civil Governor of the 
Philippines. The Governor granted an inter- 
view to every one who called on him, only re- 
stricting miscellaneous callers to certain hours 
of the day. As I bore a letter of introduction 
to him, from one of the highest officials in our 
land, I reached him quickly and easily. He 
asked me what I was doing in the Philippines. 
I told him I wasn’t there for my health nor was 
I a fugitive from justice. He laughed and 
awaited my explanation. I squared myself 
with the Governor by telling him I was there 
to look up the resources of the Islands, particu- 
105 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


larly the timber. 4 Could he tell me where it 
grew in the greatest abundance and could he 
give me any general pointers that would make 
me glad I came ? ’ 

At this point of the interview the whole civil 
commission came into his office. He intro- 
duced me all around and I talked enthusiasti- 
cally for a few minutes to that most honorable 
body of men, on the subject that lay nearest my 
heart, viz., the resources of the Philippines, 
which I had read and heard about, and was 
now on the ground to see. 

I can’t say how much I interested them. I 
noticed that none of them went to sleep nor 
even looked bored, in fact they all seemed in- 
terested. But they had met to discuss matters 
of state, so I got out more or less gracefully. 
That was Saturday evening. The Governor 
told me to meet him at 8 130 a.m. the follow- 
ing Monday and that we would go into the sub- 
ject more exhaustively, in short, that we would 
go clear to the bottom of it. I went away feel- 
ing that the Governor was a mighty good fel- 
106 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


low, and was on hand at 8:29 Monday, a.m. 
But the Governor wasn’t. His secretary told 
me that he had a sore toe and that his physi- 
cian had recommended that he stay at home for 
several days. 

Over Sunday, at my hotel, I met one 
Lieutenant Bolton, who was stationed at Dagu- 
pan, 120 miles from Manila; the terminus of 
the Manila and Dagupan railroad, the only rail- 
road in the Philippines. I told him what I was 
in the Islands for and he got enthusiastic and 
swore roundly that he was glad to see me. He 
said I was the first bird of the kind that he had 
seen in the Philippines. That all the American 
business men he had seen, so far, were saloon 
keepers or whiskey salesmen. That the soldiers 
had done the work that soldiers had come to do. 
That it was now up to civilians to come and do 
the rest and to see one come, on legitimate busi- 
ness bent, was a sight good for sore eyes. 

* Mr. Allen, ’ the Lieutenant said, ‘ I’m sta- 
tioned at Dagupan. I keep house there. I’m 
Provo Marshal of the town. I’ve got two ser- 
107 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


vants, keep bachelor’s hall, and I’d be most 
mighty glad to have you come and spend just 
as long a time with me as you can spare. I’m 
down here in Manila for a couple of days ; go- 
ing back next Tuesday morning; will you go 
with me? You can’t go out to see the forests 
without a guide and guard. The natives would 
murder you for fifty cents, Mex. ’ 

‘ Thank you, Lieutenant, ’ I said, 4 I’m a man 
of peace. You’ll never catch me going where 
there is danger if I know it. Governor Taft 
has asked me to call on him Monday at 8:30 
a.m. After I’ve seen him, if nothing is in the 
way, I shall be very glad to accept your kind 
invitation and go with you to your quarters 
next Tuesday morning. ’ 

After my call at Governor Taft’s office, Mon- 
day morning, there was absolutely nothing in 
the way of accepting Lieutenant Bolton’s kind 
invitation. I asked the Governor’s secretary 
if he could get for me, from the Governor, a 
letter of introduction to General Smith, military 
commander of the province in which Dagupan 
108 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


is located, and said : * As I am going to leave 
Manila Tuesday at 7 a.m. could it be sent to 
my hotel to-day ? ’ 

He said it could. 

Tuesday a.m. came, but no letter of intro- 
duction. I went to Dagupan on that railroad, 
the worst in the world, at least that I have ever 
seen. If there is, on this earth, a worse railroad 
I can’t imagine what it could be like. One 
through train a day, the cars and stations un- 
speakably dirty, the speed twelve miles an hour. 
On the journey the train stopped opposite a 
sugar plantation and the fireman and engineer 
both jumped off and got some sugar cane. The 
fireman must have been busy sucking that sugar 
cane for the next hour, as our speed was about 
nine miles during that time. That road was 
built by English capital. The Spanish Govern- 
ment guaranteed the builders a ten per cent, 
annual dividend for putting it through. The 
stations along the way are fairly well built brick 
structures. But the rolling stock ! the service ! 
the speed! the dirt and discomfort of a journey 
109 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


over it ! The arrival and departure of trains is 
announced by the ringing of a dinner bell. 
Why, I don’t know. I tried to guess a reason. 
My caribou Spanish wasn’t sufficient to get an 
explanation from the noble Filipinos running 
the thing, so I decided that the engineer or en- 
gine didn’t have spunk enough to whistle. This 
is not given as authentic, it’s merely a surmise 
of my own after looking the lay-out over. 

We got to Dagupan in the evening. Dagu- 
pan is not a beautiful city. It matches the Ma- 
nila and Dagupan railroad. I have in the past 
tried to match dress goods for the women of 
my household. That’s hard work. But if I’m 
ever sent out to find a town that is a good 
match for the dirtiest, toughest, most disrepu- 
table ‘ no count ’ railroad on earth, that will be 
easy. I know where to go. Dagupan, P. I., is 
the town. Dagupan is made up of a cluster of 
barrios (villages) and has probably 10,000 in- 
habitants. One rice mill, a primitive distillery 
for the manufacture of bena, the native drink 
—a sort of wood alcohol made from the nipa 


no 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


palm — and a shipyard where boats (also very 
primitive) are made, constitute the manufac- 
turing industries of the place. Its commercial 
side is seen in some Chinese stores where a 
limited supply of merchandise of a nondescript 
character may be found. I made the rounds of 
those stores to get a pound of nails to nail up 
the boxes containing some nipa palm suits I 
rwanted to ship home. In one place I found 
some American wire nails, which I couldn’t buy 
by the pound. The Chinaman who kept the 
store sold them to me by the dozen. I got what 
I judged to be a pound and had to pay eighteen 
cents for them. The religious interests of the 
town are represented by a musty, fusty church, 
redolent of the superstitions and bigotry of past 
ages. 

1 Before leaving Manila for Dagupan I 
dropped a letter to Governor Taft telling him 
my post office address for a week, would be 
Dagupan and that a letter of introduction to 
General Smith would be gratefully accepted. 
After three days’ sojourn in Dagupan I re- 
ceived this letter from Governor Taft : 


hi 














OFFICE OF THE 

CIVIL GOVERNOR OF THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS. 


Manila, P. I., July 17,1901. 


George H. Allen, Esq., 

Dagupan, P. I. , 

My Dear Sir:- 

I have your note of the 16th instant telling me 
that you have gone to Dagupan, and enquiring whether there 
will be an opportunity for you to go on a r Government boat in 
the next week or two to see something of the wooded portions of 
the Islands. I cannot tell you about the movements of the 
Government boats; that you can only asoertain by going to the 
Chief Quartermaster, Division of the Philippines, to whom I 
shall be glad to give you a letter. My impression i6 that 
you would be more able to go as you desire to go by consulting 
the Compani Marl tin. a, who have boats going in all directions. 
Mindanao is a very wooded country, and the Island of Basilan, 
which is not more than two hours ride from Zamboanga, is possibly 
the richest in woods in the Archipelago. There are boats, I 
believe, which run from Manila to Zamboanga^ and' you would'find 
no difficulty in getting across to Basilan. I have 6ent a 
letter of introduction to General Smith for you which I suppose 
you already have.' 

Very truly yours, 









TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


'At the time of my receiving Governor Taft’s 
letter General Smith sent word to me at Lieu- 
tenant Bolton’s house to call upon him. Gov- 
ernor Taft had written General Smith about your 
Uncle George and the General asked me what 
he could do for me. I told him I wanted to see 
the timber in the Philippine Islands. He told 
me to come to his office the next day and he 
would help me all he could. I called at his 
office and the General gave me a cigar and 
called a Sergeant and said to him : ‘ Point out 
to Mr. Allen on our map where the best timber 
in this district is located. ’ The Sergeant 
showed me where it was — on the map — and I 
asked the General how I could get there. He 
told me I could walk or go on horse back. I 
asked him if it was safe to ramble out in the 
woods, and in his opinion it was, but I noticed 
that his house, located on the best street in 
Dagupan, was patrolled by an armed guard 
every minute of the day and night. 

I told Lieutenant Bolton of my interview and 
fie said : ‘ Well I’ll be d — ! I thought he’d send 
115 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


you out with an armed and mounted guard. 
If you want to get back to home and friends, 
don’t you go very far out of Dagupan without a 
guard. ’ I knocked around Dagupan with 
Lieutenant Bolton for a week. If I had been 
the President of the United States, he couldn’t 
have treated me better. I came back to Manila 
over that same railroad. It runs through the 
best valley in the Philippine Islands. Rice 
paddies, poorly tilled, towns composed of na- 
tive shacks, a few sugar plantations, as you near 
Manila, and numerous cocoanut groves are the 
sights that greet the eye on the journey. Com- 
pared to the sugar plantations of our Southern 
States or of the Hawaiian Islands, those Philip- 
pine sugar plantations are as a boy’s popgun 
compared to a Winchester repeating rifle. 

There must be ‘ something in it ’ for him, 
if a man gets enthusiastic over the country 
along that line of railway. 

The same high official who had given me 
a letter to Governor Taft, also gave me one 
to Gen. Arthur MacArthur, who, when the 
116 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


letter was written, was Military Commander 
of the Philippine Islands. When I got to 
Manila, General MacArthur was en route for 
the United States (I’m sorry I didn’t meet 
him. I know he must be a level-headed man), 
so I presented my letter to his successor Gen- 
eral Chaffee. When you have a letter, boys, 
to a big gun, there’s a gauntlet of little guns 
to get past before you get to the big gun. I 
got past several toy pistols with my letter and 
finally to a real live captain, with shoulder 
straps, Hutchinson, I think his name was. 
It’s not material, we’ll call him Hutchinson. 
He asked me what was my business with the 
General. I told him my first business with the 
General was to see him. He was an insistent 
sort of fellow. I guess that’s how he came 
to be a captain, boys. I’ve noticed that the 
fellow who insists, and insists, and insists 
usually ‘ gets there. ’ The heights to which 
any of you may climb will largely depend upon 
the persistence of your insistence. Insist upon 
being what you determine to be, back up your 
ii 7 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


insistence with determined persistence and 
you’ll be it. This captain wanted to know 
what the nature of my business was. I told 
him who I was and where I was from and 
what I was in the Philippine Islands for. I 
told him what I really wanted was an armed 
guard, with guns and pistols and swords and 
spears, to take me out into the woods to show 
me the timber I had read about and heard 
about. 

‘ Oh my, ’ he said, ‘ you can’t get that. We 
are handling this country with kid gloves now.” 
Just what he meant I don’t know. That’s 
what he told me. ‘ Well, ’ I said, ‘ I want to 
see General Chaffee. ’ In due process of time, 
I was ushered into General Chaffee’s private 
room. There he sat, a mild, quiet, unostenta- 
tious, medium-sized gentleman. When it came 
to dignified importance, he wasn’t in it with 
the toy pistols outside. He shook my hand 
warmly and said he was glad to see me. I 
told him I was glad to see him, which was no 
lie. He pulled out a drawer to his desk and 
118 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


gave me a Manila cigar. Manila cigars, by 
the way, in my opinion are all bad, but some 
are worse than others. This is no aspersion 
on the General’s hospitality, the cigar he gave 
me was the very best that could be procured 
in the Philippine Islands. 

We lit up and got to talking. We talked 
along easy-like, for half an hour. I kept my 
cigar going. Those Manila cigars usually 
went out on me, but this really was a pretty 
good cigar. Don’t know where the General 
found them; most of those I bought tasted 
like tarred rope and smelled worse. In the 
course of conversation, I asked the General 
if it was safe for an ordinary citizen to go 
hiking out in the woods, to look up the tim- 
ber propositions I had read about and heard 
about and come over to the Philippine Islands 
to see. 

‘ Well, ’ the General said, ‘ if you go out and 
don’t get killed, it’s safe. If you go out and 
get killed it isn’t safe. ’ 

‘ Um huh, ’ I said, ‘ a kind of a toad-stool 
119 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


mushroom-test. If you eat it and die it’s a 
toad-stool. If you eat it and live it’s a mush- 
room. ’ The General smiled and said that was 
a very good illustration. 

My astute listener who has followed me 
closely, will observe that up to the present 
time, Uncle George hadn’t really seen much of 
the timber propositions he had read about, and 
heard about, and had come to see; but follow 
him further, and you will learn before he left 
those Islands he got next to some of those 
propositions. I told the General I was going 
down to Mindanao which I had been told was 
one of the most heavily wooded islands in the 
archipelago. ‘ Would he give me a letter of 
introduction to present to military command- 
ers wherever I might strike them in the 
Islands ? ? 

He cheerfully complied. I finished the cigar, 
took another that he offered me (they were 
really fair cigars), thanked the General and 
brought away this letter, and bade him good 
day. 


120 


HtU»QUARTKRS Division 6£ THS PttlUPPlNES* 

Manila, P.I., August 3d, 1901 

To the Commanding Generals Department^ Of 
the Visayas and of Mindanao and Jolo and to 
Commanding Officers of troops in those Depart- 
ments: 

This letter will introduce to you Mr. 
George H. Allen of Clinton, New York who is 
on a visit to the Philippine Islands. He Is 
commended to me by the Honorable Secretary of 
War, who writes at the request of his brother. 
Mr. Allen is looking through the Islands with 
a view to learning what he can of their re^ 
sQuroes, especially the location and condition 
of e tanding timber* 

Any courtesy extended to Mr. Allen will' 
he duly appreciated by him. 



Major General, U. s. A« ,y 
Commanding the Division of the Philippines. 











\ 











The Garcia 

VOL. It. CLINTON, N. Y., JANUARY, 1902. No. 1 


Continuation of Unde George's Address 
to the Garcia Club . 

While in Manila I fell in with an official sent 
to the Philippines, from Washington, who was 
one of the enthusiasts I have mentioned. He 
was holding down a $6,000 job (gold, not 
Mex.) 

‘ Mr. Allen, ’ he said, ‘ I’m enthusiastic over 
these Islands. Why, Mr. Allen, do you know 
that aside from the sugar lands, sufficient in 
area to produce enough sugar to supply the 
world’s needs, aside from the wonderful tim- 
ber proposition we have here, aside from the 
copper, iron, and coal we’ve got, there are 
untold millions of gold? Why! right here in 
the island of Luzon there are single twenty- 
acre tracts from which enough gold can be 
123 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


taken to pay the paltry $20,000,000 we paid to 
Spain for the Spanish improvements on these 
Islands. ’ 

‘ Yes? ’ I said, ‘ that’s what I’ve read about, 
and heard about, and have come to see. ’ 

4 Well, ’ he said, ‘ they are here, and the 
richest gold fields are not in Luzon, they are 
in Mindanao. I have a friend in Mindanao, a 
civil officer, the head of one of the provinces 
down there, in the department of which I am 
chief, here in the Islands, and he writes me 
the gold prospects down there are fabulous. 
He writes me that in his province there is one 
tract where the soil is simply impregnated 
with gold. That it reaches from the bed of 
the river, of which he speaks, right up to the 
summit of the mountain. That you can put 
down a shovel anywhere on that tract and find 
gold in every shovelful of dirt. ’ ‘ Why, ’ 

he said, ‘ there are miners coming into Manila 
now from the Klondike country and from 
different parts of the States, and from South 
Africa. They hang around Manila just long 
124 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


enough to get their bearings and then they 
slip off down to Mindanao and they are settling 
on claims and holding them down until Con- 
gress passes such laws as will enable them to 
get titles. ’ 

‘ Well, ’ I said, ‘ Mr. Thusme ’ (Thusme 
wasni’t this enthusiastic official’s name, but 
we’ll call him Thusme) ‘ I understand from 
Governor Taft that Mindanao is one of the 
most heavily wooded islands in the archipelago. 
I’m particularly interested in the woods of the 
Islands. I’m going down to Mindanao. Give me 
a letter to this under official of yours down 
there, I’ll look him up and, with a letter from 
yourself, he may be good enough to put me 
next to this tract, and if he does I’ll hike over it, 
and if I stub my toe on gold nuggets, I’ll stake 
a claim myself. ’ I asked Mr. Thusme if he 
didn’t know of some American, in Manila, that 
I could get to go with me to Mindanao, so in 
case we saw the gold lying close to the sur- 
face, we could locate together and be company 
for each other. Mr. Thusme had spoken of the 
125 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


Dattos and chiefs of the Moro tribes down 
there, having spear heads of solid gold, and 
while I was willing to hunt for gold, on the 
side, I thought some company would be a good 
thing if the gold was hunting me, on the end 
of a spear, in the hands of a fierce Moro Datto. 
Mr. Thusme didn’t know of any Americans 
in Manila who were not in the Government 
service and the Government frowned on any 
of its officials going into commercial enterprise 
of any kind. Mr. Thusme feelingly assured 
me if it weren’t for that ‘ six ’ (Not Mex. but 
gold) he would shake the service, don overalls 
and blouse and stay by a claim himself. I 
couldn’t exactly blame him. Six (gold, not 
Mex.) isn’t a bad claim in itself with no 
necessity for overalls and blouse and no need 
for anxious waiting for Congress to do its 
duty. Mr. Thusme gave me the letter to his 
sub. in Mindanao, Captain Gotit (Gotit wasn’t 
his name but we’ll call him Gotit) and I left 
him. Now I hadn’t caught the gold fever, 
not at all. I had simply heard a statement, 
126 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


from a man on the ground, a high official, cor- 
roborating the stories of the resources of the 
Philippine Islands, that I’d heard about, and 
read about and had come myself to see, and 
while I hadn’t seen anything in Luzon that 
stirred my blood, that aroused my cupidity, 
that fired my enthusiasm for our new posses- 
sions, I was willing, seeing that I had gotten as 
far as Luzon, to go the rest of the way, and 
Mindanao was the rest of the way, as it was the 
last island in the group. Now, there was stop- 
ping at my hotel, one Mr. Jow (we’ll call him 
Jow because that wasn’t his name), a civil and 
mining engineer, an American. He had spent 
years of his life mining in New Zealand, Mex- 
ico, and Arizona. Had come to Manila on the 
ship that brought me there, as an expert en- 
gineer to help figure on a contract. He had 
just finished his work on the very day that I 
had my talk with Mr. Thusme. On going to 
tiffin I found Mr. Jow debating whether he 
should take the next ship back to Hong Kong, 
en route for San Francisco, or stay in the 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 

Islands and do some looking around. I told 
him if he was a practical mining man and 
loose, he would be a great chump to go back 
to America without a shipload of gold. That 
I didn’t know any more about mining than 
a cat knew about astronomy, but that I had got 
wind of fabulous gold fields in the Islands, that 
I knew right where they were located or rather 
knew a man who knew a man who knew, that I 
had a letter from the man who knew the 
man who knew, and I proposed to take the 
next ship sailing in that direction. If he was 
willing I’d take him along for company, and 
in consideration of his — Jow’s — practical 
knowledge of mining put him next. That 
we’d share the expense of the expedition and 
divy up, share and share alike on the gold we 
found. 

Jow scoffed at the idea of fabulous gold 
fields in the Philippines. He said, ‘ The Span- 
iards have been hunting for gold here for 
three hundred years and haven’t found 
enough to buy shirts for the natives, * I 
128 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


pointed Mr. Jow to the fact the natives didn’t 
want shirts, wouldn’t wear shirts if they had 
them, that I had my information from high 
authority, and then I told Mr. Jow about the 
gold fields I had located. Jow wanted to know 
where they were. ‘ That’s all right, Mr. Jow, ’ 
I said, ‘ if you want to go with me on my 
proposition, say so and we’ll go together and 
share and share alike. ’ 

I wanted Jow, or thought I did. Jow agreed 
and I showed him my letter and we made it 
up to take the next ship for Lurigao, Min- 
danao, which was the town whei e Captain Gotit 
was located, who knew where to put his shovel 
down and take up gold at every scoop, and who 
in view of the nature and source of my letter, 
would naturally put me next. That after- 
noon I called upon the biggest man, from a 
commercial point of view, in the Philippine 
Islands, bearing to him a letter of introduction 
from Governor Taft ; my errand being to find 
out when the next boat sailed for Lurigao. 
This was on a Tuesday afternoon. This gen- 


129 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


tleman, who was connected with the shipping 
industry of the Islands, informed me that the 
next boat was due to sail for Lurigao at io a.m. 
that day, but that boats in the Islands rarely 
left on the advertised day, and that she hadn’t 
yet sailed. If he had said the ‘ advertised 
week, ’ he’d have hit it closer. He also 
kindly gave me a letter of introduction to one 
of the Dattos of Mindanao with whom he was 
acquainted, saying that if I got that far down 
it might do me some good. I had already 
learned enough of the ways of the Islands not 
to be in nervous haste to catch a boat advertised 
to leave that day, and took my letter to the 
hotel and showed it to Mr. Jow. Mr. Jow 
could speak Spanish and read it a little. He 
took the letter and began struggling with it. I 
stood by anxiously waiting for him to interpret 
it to me. ‘ What does it say, Jow? ’ I asked. 

‘ Is it a good letter ; will it help us with Senor 
Datto Piang? ’ Jow said as near as he could 
make it out he thought it would, that his Span- 
ish was a little rusty but he thought it said in 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


one place that, * Senor Allen was a good fellow, 
to boil him slow. ’ Jow and I went out that 
afternoon to buy some presents to take to our 
Datto, if we should get as far as Cottobato, and 
to look over the boat that was to take us to 
Lurigao. As we looked her over we had our 
doubts as to whether we’d ever get far enough 
on our way in the crazy tub to be boiled slow or 
fast by a Moro Datto. Jow was a very 
profane man and swore that he wouldn’t 
trust his life in her to sail across Ma- 
nila Bay, but I stiffened up his courage 
by calling his attention to the fact that she 
had navigated those waters, judging by her ap- 
pearance, for at least three hundred years and 
would probably make one more trip in safety. 
If we didn’t take her we wouldn’t get another 
for a month, I said. So we engaged first-class 
passage in her for Lurigao. 4 First-class ’ is a 
relative term. First-class accommodation on 
that ship was two state rooms, six feet high, 
six feet long and five feet wide. There were six 
first-class passengers on that trip to Lurigao 1 . 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


Jow and I and another fellow, who stood six 
feet two in his stocking feet, occupied one 
room. Our ‘ six-feet-two ’ friend could give 
Jow all the trumps in the deck and beat him at 
profanity. As he couldn’t stand up straight in 
our cabin, or stretch out full length in his bunk, 
by two inches, there was a smell of brimstone 
all the way to Lurigao, strongly impregnated 
with bed-bug odor. These two odors fought for 
supremacy all the way with the brimstone well 
to the fore on occasions, notably when our tall 
friend would forget his length and make a 
vicious lunge for one or a dozen of the occu- 
pants of our cabin, not on the passenger list. 
Our deck companions were two pigs, a goat, a 
yearling calf and two mangy dogs. We didn’t 
sail on Tuesday, the advertised date for sailing, 
nor on Wednesday, nor on Thursday, nor on 
Friday; but on Saturday at 4 p.m. we weighed 
anchor and started for Lurigao. 


132 


The Garcia 

VOL. II. CLINTON, N. Y., FEBRUARY, 1902. No. 2 


Continuation of Unde George’s Address 
to the Garcia Club. 

It was the typhoon season and our captain 
was a prudent man. As we got well out into 
the bay a typhoon was sighted in the distance 
and we turned tail and ran away from it. It 
was only 600 miles from Manila to Lurigao, 
with no port of call between, but what with 
running away from typhoons, it took us five 
days to make the trip. Five days on the ship 
and four days waiting at a $15 a day hotel, 
after her advertised date for sailing, made the 
trip in point of both time and money, more ex- 
pensive than a trip from Clinton to Europe 
would be; and steerage passage on any of our 
Atlantic liners would be preferable to first-class 
on that ship. .We were out of sight of land 
133 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


many times. Running away from a typhoon in 
the open sea, in a creaking tub without a life 
preserver on her, made your Uncle vow that if 
he ever landed safe on any kind of shore, hostile 
or otherwise, he would stick to terra firma and 
never put to sea in that particular ship again. 

Scared ? Boys, your Uncle was scared eight- 
een hours of every day of the voyage and was 
so busy the remaining six with those first-class 
passengers in our cabin, not on the passenger 
list, that he had no time to be scared. After all, 
boys, a good healthy warfare of any kind has 
its compensations. I believe I’d rather fight 
than be scared any day. 

We got to Lurigao, safe though bearing the 
scars of many conflicts, and as I walked the 
gang plank of that ship, I made a mental reser- 
vation to stay on land forever and ever and 
grow up with the country. If anyone had told 
me at that time, that two weeks later I would 
board that same ship to go back to Manila, I 
would have told him he wasn’t acquainted with 
your Uncle George. But I did, for the very 
134 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


reason that death on the ocean wave seemed 
preferable to ten days more of life in Lurigao. 
That ship, after touching at Lurigao, sailed on 
her way down the coast to Zamboango, and in 
two weeks’ time was back in Lurigao with her 
cargo of hemp, that she had picked up down the 
coast. I was in Lurigao too, could have got a 
better ship back to Manila by waiting ten days, 
but ten days in Lurigao was ten days and — I 
wanted to get back to Manila. 

Lurigao was a military station where civil 
government was being inaugurated All the 
civil and military officers were down to the 
dock to meet the ship, except the military com- 
mander, Captain Bevens. The arrival of a 
ship in Lurigao was an event and our boys were 
all on hand to see her come in, and get their 
mail. Jow, our tall friend and I walked to the 
town, a place of some three thousand inhabit- 
ants, in company with the civil and military 
officers. It was 6 p.m. and a hotel was on our 
minds. An Irishman kept the hotel, a good fel- 
low, but he didn’t run a good hotel. Its chief 
135 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


deficiency was that it boasted but one bed and 
that was occupied by mine host. But he had 
rooms. He showed Jow and me our quarters. 
Our tall friend being an ex-soldier and a civil 
officer, who had come to Lurigao to take his 
post, found accommodation with the military 
officers. Our quarters was a bare room. ‘Where 
do we sleep?’ I asked mine host. ‘On the 
floor,’ quoth he. ‘When will supper be 
ready?’ piped Jow. ‘I furnish no meals,’ our 
landlord said. ‘You can get meals at a restau- 
rant around the corner, kept by an ex-soldier, 
who has just opened up a place.’ ‘What are 
your rates?’ I asked. ‘Reasonable,’ he said. 
‘There is a tin wash basin out in the shed if 
you want to wash up. You’ll have to furnish 
your own soap and towels.’ Then he left us. 
Jow and I stood in the middle of our room, 
absolutely bare of furniture, not even a nail in 
the wall to hang a hat on. 

‘ Jow, ’ I said, ‘sit down and let’s talk it 
over. ’ ‘ Where? 9 Jow asked. “On the floor,” 
I said. 


136 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


Of course, Jow swore, and I missed our tall 
friend, who could give Jow all the trumps in 
the pack and beat him at it. 

1 Jow, ’ I said, ‘ if you’ll hunt up our land- 
lord and make arrangements to have our bag- 
gage brought up from the boat, I’ll hunt up the 
military commander, show him my letter from 
Chaffee, and ask him to loan us a couple of 
cots. ’ I found Captain Bevens, introduced my- 
self and showed him my letter and asked him 
for the cots, but he wouldn’t loosen on two cots, 
not even one cot. He hadn’t any cots to spare, 
he said. Jow had managed to get our baggage, 
a couple of big grip sacks, up from the boat. 
We hunted up the ex-soldier around the corner, 
got some supper, came back to our hotel, of 
course the only hotel in town, and went to 
floor. As floors go, it was a good floor. We 
were not as thankful for the floor as we were 
for the roof. It was a good tight nipa palm 
roof, and it rained all night, not such rain as we 
have in the United States. It rained by the 
job, by the piece, at so much the inch, and kept 
1 37 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


it up incessantly until sunrise. Jow swore, but 
I thanked God for that roof. 

Between naps, when Jow wasn’t swearing 
and I wasn’t giving thanks for the roof, we 
talked the situation over. I asked Jow how he 
liked the country, what he had seen of it. He 
swore at the country, the rain, the landlord, the 
floor, the tin wash basin. He swore at every- 
thing that had happened since we left Manila. 
I didn’t miss our tall friend so very much, Jow 
seemed to be doing well. There is no cloud 
without its silver lining; there were no bed- 
bugs, and there was that roof, and if that were 
possible, it seemed to be raining harder. It 
stopped raining suddenly at sunrise. I advised 
Jow to arise from his downy couch and hit that 
wash basin, and I did the same and we went 
around the corner and got some breakfast. 
After breakfast I hunted up Captain Gotit and 
presented my letter. I told the Captain I was 
particularly interested in the timber resources 
of the Islands, but hearing of the glowing 
gold prospects, in Lurigao district, that if, 
138 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 

while I was looking for timber, I should run 
across gold nuggets large enough and in suffi- 
cient quantities, I wouldn’t mind picking up a 
few, in short, that I’d stake a claim. The Cap- 
tain told me that there was undoubtedly lots of 
gold in the district but that they hadn’t un- 
earthed it yet. This was disappointing and 
didn’t correspond with Thusme’s enthusiastic 
reports of that identical gold field, but I hadn’t 
come so far not to investigate the fields. I 
asked him where the camps were and he said 
the nearest one was the Mansuran camp, ten 
miles back in the country. The Captain was 
the head of the mining syndicate in that prov- 
ince, and said what they really needed was more 
money to develop the mines, that they would 
have to put more money in before they got the 
gold out. This sounded reasonable. I have 
never struck a business yet where you didn’t 
have to put money in before you took money 
out, and I have even heard of putting it in and 
never getting it out; but I was pretty close to 
one of the Philippine Island resources that I’d 
i39 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


heard about, and read about, and had come so 
far to see. I gunned around Lurigao all that 
day, finding out what I could find out. Jow 
didn’t do a thing. Jow didn’t believe there was 
any gold to speak of in the Islands ; if there had 
been the Spaniards would have found it, he 
said, long before this. I asked him what he had 
come clear down to Mindanao for, and he said : 
“Oh, I’d have been a chump not to have satis- 
fied myself about the Philippine gold stories 
while I was on the ground, but I don’t believe 
it’s here.” Jow had struck a chair — borrowed 
it from the restaurant around the corner — like- 
wise a cheap novel, and he read all day. Cap- 
tain Gotit kindly loaned me an army blanket, a 
relic of his army service. So I had this on my 
floor the second night in Lurigao. Jow raised 
a blanket from the restaurant, and bought a bar 
of soap and some cheap towels, at a Chinese 
store, and we began to take on airs. Jow wasn’t 
swearing so hard as he was, and altogether our 
cloud was taking on a wider margin of silver. 
The second day in Lurigao I said: “Jow, 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


what’s the matter with starting out for Man- 
suran mining camp about noon to-day ? ’ * Oh, 

go to-morrow, ’ Jow said, and started in on 
another novel he had borrowed from the boys 
at the restaurant around the corner. The 
second day in Lurigao I improved each shining 
hour (it didn’t rain all day) and Jow stuck to 
that borrowed chair and cheap novel. Jow 
wasn’t just exactly pleasing me. He didn’t 
seem to be much of a hustler, and furthermore 
he opposed every move I suggested, and didn’t 
suggest any move to take its place. He didn’t 
seem to want to do anything but hang back, sit 
on that borrowed chair, read novels and swear. 
He was getting to be the worst off ox I had 
ever hitched up with. That day, through Cap- 
tain Gotit, I got acquainted with the Civil Gov- 
ernor and Secretary of Lurigao, and the Presi- 
dent of the town, three Filipino gentlemen. 
The reins of government, for that province, had 
been placed in the hands of the Governor and 
Secretary by the Civil Commission. The Presi- 
dent was elected to his office by the votes of the 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


natives, and these three gentlemen were all 
loyal to the United States Government. Cap- 
tain Gotit asked me to dine with him that 
second day in Lurigao, and Jow, who wasn’t 
with me at the time, was not included in the in- 
vitation. After dinner, several of the Captain’s 
mining syndicate, who all admitted that they 
needed more money to work their claims, went 
with me to call on the Secretary at his 
mansion. 

The mansion was a loosely constructed, two- 
story, frame building, about as much of a house 
as could be built for $1,500 in the United 
States. It was really a one-story building, the 
lower portion being a dirt floor where horses, 
cattle and pigs were housed, the family living 
aloft, a characteristic of all the Filipino dwell- 
ing houses I saw in the Philippines, from the 
best houses in Manila to the poorest nipa shacks 
in barrios through the provinces. That even- 
ing was one of the most pleasant experiences 
I had in the Philippine Islands. It was a 
glimpse into the home life of the best of the 
142 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


Filipino people. I saw nothting to give evi- 
dence of prosperity. This was the home of the 
second greatest native in one of the best prov- 
inces in the Philippines; but bare floors, the 
walls covered with paper of an antiquated pat- 
tern, yards of it sloughing off in places, a crude, 
cheap table in the center of the large living 
room with a cotton cover of an unfamiliar 
European make, some Austrian bent wood 
chairs, a piano with a cracked tone, were the 
main features of the interior. The Secretary’s 
wife and two buxom daughters and an aged 
male relative, with the Secretary, composed the 
inmates. That aged male relative was a won- 
der. As soon as we arrived, he came in from 
somewhere. I didn’t see him come in through 
the door. He was tall and slim, he may have 
blown in through a crack — there were plenty of 
them in the house. He sat down at the piano 
and began to play tunes, for the edification of 
the visitors. He reminded me of the way it 
rained the first night in Lurigao. He played 
by the job, by the piece, at so much per yard, 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


per mile, per league. We spent the evening 
and he played all the time. Through Captain 
Gotit, who spoke Spanish, I induced the 
daughters to sing some of the tunes the old 
duffer played, and they did and it wasn’t bad 
music. I wished the old fellow would let up a 
minute or two to break the monotony, but he 
didn’t break, he trotted right along. I wouldn’t 
be surprised if he is playing yet. 

The wife brought in a two-quart bottle of 
champagne. The whole family took a hand in 
getting the cork out of that bottle, except the 
aged relative ; he was playing that piano. They 
finally got the cork out and the visitors had to 
drink the champagne. The Secretary and his 
family didn't take a sip. I learned that mine 
host, the Irishman, who was a good fellow, but 
who didn’t keep a good hotel, had given a blow- 
out to the dignitaries of the town, a few nights 
before, in celebration of his securing a license 
and that the two-quart bottle of champagne had 
found its way to the Secretary’s wine cellar, as 
a result of the blow-out, all of which throws 


144 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


some light on the tout ensemble of conditions in 
the Philippine Islands. The Governor and the 
Presidenti dropped in as the evening waned, 
and the aged relative at the piano didn’t, and 
the gold situation came up for discussion. The 
Governor, the Secretary and Presidenti were 
all anxious for American capital to come in and 
develop the gold fields, and assured me that the 
country was fabulously rich in gold. The 
Presidenti said he had a gold mine, where the 
gentleman from America (meaning your Uncle 
George) could take out gold enough in a few 
hours to pay all the expenses of his trip to the 
Philippine Islands, and then and there agreed 
upon the next day to lead me to the bonanza. 


MS 


The Garcia 

VOL. II. CLINTON, N. Y., MARCH, 1902. No. 3 


Continuation of Unde George’s Address 
to the Garcia Club . 

Mansuran mining camp lay in the path of the 
Presidents claim, and I determined to start on 
the next day with Mr. Jow, if he was willing to 
leave his borrowed chair and novel — without 
him, if he wasn’t. As he was my interpreter and 
I needed him, I determined, in case he couldn’t 
be weaned from the aforenamed chair, to take 
an ex-soldier in his place, whom I had fallen in 
with in Lurigao, and who was looking for a 
job. All the soldier boys of any intelligence in 
the Islands (and it was a rare thing to find an 
American soldier who was not intelligent) had 
learned to speak Spanish. Captain Gotit told 
me that the boys in the camps would welcome 
me (miners are proverbially hospitable) but 
146 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


that I would be doubly welcome if I came in 
with some grub, as it all had to be packed into 
the camps on the backs of natives or caribou, 
over almost inaccessible trails. Rice, fish and 
cocoanuts formed the staple diet. Captain 
Sevens’ Commissary department was the only 
place in the province where grub, suitable to 
the palate of a white man, could be procured. I 
determined to approach Captain Bevens on the 
morrow and ask him to sell me some supplies, 
and arranged with the Presidenti to furnish me 
with a caribou to pack the load, a native to steer 
the caribou, also two horses, one for myself and 
one for Jow, or my ex-soldier in case Jow 
wasn’t ready to make a move. Before leaving 
the Secretary’s house that night it was all ar- 
ranged — the Presidenti agreeing to accompany 
me. The only detail of my plan that might fall 
through was my success in inducing Captain 
Bevens to sell me supplies. 

I went to my blanket on the floor feeling that 
I had done a good day’s work. Jow had turned 
in, or on, to his blanket, and wasn’t swearing, 
i47 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


which was pretty good evidence that he was 
asleep. The morning dawned a clear day, and 
in going to breakfast I met Bevens on the 
street. I approached him in my blandest man- 
ner, very much in the way I treat a dealer in 
my line, when I’m trying to sell him a carload of 
goods, and asked him if he would sell me some 
supplies. He demarred and said his supplies 
were running short, but finally agreed to sell me 
a limited amount, and told me that I might 
meet him at barracks after breakfast. I kept 
that appointment — I wanted those supplies bad. 
I don’t like rice, am not particularly enamored 
with fish, and cocoanuts aren’t filling. Some 
canned stuff from America was what I was 
pining for, bacon, crackers, veal loaf, corned 
beef, coffee. My mouth watered at the prospect 
and I knew the welcome I’d get from the 
miners with a caribou load of it. Arrived at 
barracks, I found Bevens in his quarters with 
several tomes before him with places marked 
in them. Those books were rules and regula- 
tions governing commanders of the army and 
148 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


Bevens was studying paragraphs in them, para- 
graphs that were making him waver from his 
promise to sell a civilian supplies from a mili- 
tary commissary store; paragraphs that were 
applicable in a land where merchants in trade 
kept stocks of goods. I broke into a cold sweat. 
Was the man going back on his promise? Was 
I going to lose the chance to buy that stuff? 
No such stuff to eat in that province as Bevens 
had. 

I thought quick. Boys, if you ever want to 
do some gymnastic thinking go to the Philip- 
pine Islands, board for a week on one of the 
crack coast liners that ply between the ports of 
the Islands, and for two days at a restaurant, 
kept by an ex-soldier, who has just opened a 
place and has to depend, for his supplies, on the 
native markets, and then see slipping away 
from you something to eat from a United 
States army commissary store, and you’ll think 
quick, boys, I’ll guarantee you will — I speak 
from a pretty general knowledge of the animal 
man. I sized up my man, took a mental note 


149 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 

of his calibre and said : 4 Captain Bevens, what 
a pity it is that we haven’t more such conscien- 
tious commanders in the army as yourself. I 
see your situation, Captain. I see that you 
really haven’t any right to sell me from your 
stores. It was mighty kind of you to let me 
buy this stuff. I’m going out for a week’s trip 
through the mining camps with a scout and a 
native. About what would you advise me to 
take? I want to treat the miners I’ll meet. 
How much will a caribou carry besides a 
native, Captain? You’re a soldier and know 
about camp life, Captain; and I’m only a chump 
civilian and don’t know anything about these 
things. Help me make out the list. Fifteen 
pounds each of coffee, bacon, corned beef, sar- 
dines, pickled tongue, baked pork and beans 
would be about the right amount, Captain? 
Some catsup, olives and Ginez mixed pickles? 
Say, Captain, I’ll never forget your kindness, ’ 
and I kept on thanking the chump until I had 
wormed out of him the permission to buy $4.55 
(gold) worth of his stores. I wanted at least 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 

five times that much, and the caribou would 
have carried it. Instead of fifty pounds of 
crackers he cut me down to five. Three measly 
pounds was all the bacon he’d sell me and olives 
none at all. Oh ! he was a daisy, boys. He had 
fully made up his mind to turn me down and 
not sell me a sou-markee’s worth of his stuff. 
He sourly told me not to come back for any 
more, but I did — when I got back from that 
Mansuran trip, a few days later, and that time 
he did turn me down and wouldn’t sell me a 
cent’s worth. My ex-soldier — Duncan was his 
name — I had already spoken to and told him I 
might need him to go with me, and engaged 
him to go to the Presidenti’s house and get the 
native to take the caribou around to the bar- 
racks to be loaded, also to ask the Presidenti to 
ride to the barracks with the two horses he had 
promised to furnish me, then, ‘ Duncan, ’ I 
said, ‘ come to Captain Gotit’s office and re- 
port. ’ I went to Gotit’s office with Jow to get 
final and explicit directions as to just where the 
camps lay that I wanted to visit. 

151 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


The morning had worn away and it was 
nearly noon. That doesn’t sound like much 
work to do in half a day. Back here in Amer- 
ica we would do that in an hour easy enough, 
but it takes tall hustling to accomplish it in the 
Philippine Islands in half a day. Jow and I 
were in Gotit’s office, talking over the situa- 
tion, when Jow spoke up. 

‘ Mr. Allen, ’ he said, ‘ I don’t see as there is 
any use in starting to-day. We can just as 
well get up early to-morrow, ride out to that 
camp in the forenoon and get back at night.” 
‘ Mr. Jow, ’ I said, 4 this expedition moves to- 
day, not to-morrow. Inside an hour you’ll see 
me pointing for Mansuran camp with a caval- 
cade of one bull loaded with provisions, one 
Presidenti riding on horse back, one American 
(which will be myself) on another horse and 
there will be another you can ride if you want 
to go along. If you don’t I’ll find someone else, 
to ride that horse, who can speak Spanish. You 
can decide just about this time whether you 
want to go with me or not. I haven’t come to 
152 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


Mindanao to look over this gold field, to ride 
out in the morning and back at night. I pro- 
pose to go out with provisions and stay out 
until I want to come back. I’ll probably stay 
out several days. That’s my programme. If it 
suits you come along, if it doesn’t suit you, 
we’ll each go the way that suits us best. ’ 

Jow decided that he didn’t want to go that 
day, and went back to the hotel. Duncan came 
up to the office shortly after, riding one of the 
Presidents horses and leading another and 
with the native and the caribou in his wake. 
He reported that the Presidenti had bethought 
him of a fiesta that was to take place on that 
day. That he couldn’t get off ; he must attend 
the fiesta, but sent Duncan with the horses and 
word that I could go with the native and cari- 
bou and my companion to Mansuran, and that 
the following day, he would meet me at the 
camp, and together we would go to his gold 
mine. It was now noon. We ate dinner at the 
restaurant and I started out for Mansuran with 
my caribou and Duncan, instead of Jow. 
i53 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


The horses were diminutive beasts, scrubby 
little ponies. The way for a mile out of Luri- 
gao lay over a very poor wagon road, then 
through a swale for a couple of miles. Many 
times our horses were up to their bellies in mud, 
several times I thought I’d lost my beast in the 
swale, but he was a plucky brute and got me 
through. We struck the bed of a river, after 
this, on a tributary of which Mansuran camp is 
located, and it was that particular tributary I 
was after, as it was the river from the bed of 
which, to the mDuntain top, the soil was im- 
pregnated with gold — according to Mr. 
Thusme in Manila, who got his news from 
Captain Gotit in Lurigao, whom I had left but 
a few short hours ago. Our trail lay first on 
one side of the stream then on the other. Forty 
times we forded those two streams and at sun- 
down rode into Mansuran camp, with our cari- 
bou and native bringing up the rear. Delp, an 
English miner, held the fort at Mansuran camp. 
He had a partner who had left that day for 
Lurigao for grub, as they were nearly out. Was 
i54 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


Delp glad to see some one from the outside 
world, with news from Manila, with a bundle 
of the latest papers procurable from London 
and San Francisco, then eight to ten weeks old ? 
Wouldn’t he have shared his last plate of rice 
with him ? Aye, he would and counted it great 
gain, but when in addition to that, he saw the 
stuff come off the caribou’s back! — boys, a 
Christmas tree with Santa Claus coming down 
the chimney is a tame affair, and I never expect 
to get a warmer welcome. Too full for utter- 
ance was Delp. The freedom of the camp was 
mine. His coat, his boots, his shirt were mine, 
if I wanted them; all the gold Delp had was 
mine, an’ I would but claim it, which I wouldn’t 
when he showed it to me. He had it wrapped 
up in a piece of paper the size of a homeopathic 
dose of powder — cleaned up and weighed, it 
was about fifteen cents’ worth — but he had 
prospects. He was putting in some riffles up 
the stream. He had been on the claim for two 
months and had sunk shafts two, four, six feet 
deep all over it and he hadn’t found fifteen 
i55 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


cents’ worth of gold — but he had hopes of his 
riffles. ‘ You are just in time to help me place 
them in the morning, ’ he said. Duncan tethered 
the horses and the native led the caribou away 
where it could wallow in the water. Delp got 
out his spider and we had a supper of my 
bacon, crackers and some fried anions with 
rice, cooked over Delp’s camp fire. I never 
tasted anything so good. 

I stayed at Mansuran camp until noon the 
next day. We helped Delp place his riffles, and 
at noon my Presidenti rode into camp with 
Jow. After I left Lurigao Jow got hold of the 
Presidenti, who, supposing that Jow and I were 
still in partnership, told him that he was going 
out to Mansuran to meet me, and from there on 
to his mining claim, and asked Jow to come with 
him ; and Jow came. Jow and I were no longer 
partners, but after dinner the Presidenti, Dun- 
can, Jow, a native the Presidenti brought with 
him, and myself started off on a hike after the 
Presidenti’s mine. We went ten miles over a 
mountain range to find it. It was the wildest 
156 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


country imaginable. It would have been im- 
possible to go with our horses. For several 
miles we went up the bed of the river on which 
Mansuran camp was located. We were in the 
Lurigao mining district. We passed camps of 
American miners, who were trying to beat the 
natives in placer mining. Some of them had 
riffles in the stream, but none of them were tak- 
ing out gold enough to pay for the grub they 
ate while getting it. That stream had been 
searched from bed rock up for centuries, by the 
natives. Several hundred natives were then on 
the stream washing for gold. They found 
some. I saw them going home at night, to their 
shacks, with the day’s find in the bottom of a 
cocoanut shell; their wooden pans hanging at 
their sides. That is, the successful ones had it 
in the shell. Most of them had their shells 
hanging empty at their sides, to keep their pans 
company. No gold at all to show for their 
day’s washing. They were perfectly harmless 
and friendly. I took the shells from the hands 
of a number of successful ones, to examine their 


i57 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


find. A teaspoonful of black sand in the bot- 
tom of the shell, in a tablespoonful of water. 
When the cup was tilted carefully a few specks 
of the metal would show at the bottom of the 
sand. Many times I would be unable to tilt the 
cup dexterously enough to discover the fine 
gold, when the native would take it from my 
hand, dexterously work the sand and water to 
one side of the shell and bringing the few 
specks of gold to sight, triumphantly point to it 
and exclaim, ‘ Bueno, mucho bueno ’ (good, 
very good). 

Very good forsooth! They didn’t make five 
cents a day on an average. We stopped along 
the way and looked into their shacks. The 
most distressed, poverty-stricken, wretched 
class of humanity it has ever been my misfor- 
tune to look upon, were the native gold diggers 
of the Lurigao mining district. They are the 
most expert panners in the world. They will 
pan gold out of dirt where an American miner 
can’t discover it. Jow, an old American miner, 
tried his hand, but would fail to bring a color to 
158 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


view, but a native woman would take up a pan 
of dirt from the same place, dexterously wash 
it in the running stream until she had it reduced 
to a teaspoonful of sand showing some gold, 
just a glint of color, a fraction of a cent’s 
worth, then carefully turn the sand into her 
cocoanut shell. Men, women and children 
wash for gold in the streams. They know its 
value and get it. Chinese make a tour of the 
diggings periodically and buy their gold, and 
pay them, in Mexican dollars, as much for it as 
they could get from the mint in Philadelphia. 

Late in the afternoon the Presidenti led us 
to his mine. Some Americans had jumped it 
and were working it. It was hard to tell who 
was most disgusted, the Presidenti, the Ameri- 
cans who had jumped the claim, or your Uncle 
George. Just what the Presidenti’s scheme was 
in taking me twenty miles from Lurigao, to 
show me that spot of ground, I shall never 
know. Whether there was a legend that gold 
existed there, and the Presidenti, through some 
law known and respected by the Filipinos, had 
i59 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


a claim on it ; whether the Americans had got- 
ten wind of the legend and were trying to prove 
its truth, just what there was to it, I do not 
know and I would have had to learn Spanish 
and stay in Lurigao too long to find out. I 
only know the Presidenti said it was his mine, 
and after two weeks’ work on it the Americans 
didn’t want to dispute his claim. We spent the 
night with the miners and the next day hiked 
back to Mansuran, where Delp had kept our 
horses and caribou for us, and the next day 
"bade Delp (who was still working on his riffles) 
good by and rode back to Lurigao. What was 
left of my provisions I gave to Delp. His part- 
ner hadn’t returned. We found him in Lurigao 
trying to drown his sorrows at the bar of the 
hotel — and succeeding mightily. I was glad 
Delp had the stuff and more than ever regretted 
Captain Bevens’ niggardliness. 


160 


The Garcia 


VOL. II. CLINTON, N. Y., APRIL, 1902. No. 4 


Continuation of Unde George's Address 
to the Garcia Club. 

There had blown into Lurigao, during our 
absence, one Patrick Michael McDinnis. Pat 
was a character. The boys called him Mac. 
He had some quartz claims twenty-four miles 
from Lurigao in an opposite direction from the 
placer mines we had just come from. My fame 
had spread in Lurigao, during my absence, and 
the word was passed around that I was from 
the States, looking up the resources of the Isl- 
ands, with money to burn, and I shouldn’t be 
surprised if the report went with it that I was 
an easy mark. I hadn’t more than gotten my 
head in the restaurant when Mac tackled me. 
A monstrous big, raw-boned Irishman with as 
honest a face as I ever saw on a man. I took 
161 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


to Mac. I liked him at first sight. Mac didn’t 
wait for an introduction. Ts this Misther 
Allen?’ he said. I sorrowfully admitted that it 
was and asked him what I could do for him. 
‘I understhand, Misther Allen, that yez are 
looking up the rasources of the Islands.’ By 
‘yez’ he meant Jow and me. I said I was. T 
understhand yez are interested in gold mines, 
Misther Allen.’ 

‘Not so much as I was,’ I said. 

‘And that yez are looking up thimber, 
Misther Allen.’ 

‘Yes,’ I said. 

‘Well sur, Misther Allen, me name is Mc- 
Dinnis. If it’s gold mines yez are afther, I 
have thim sur. I have six claims over in the 
Jaser disthrict, sur, and I’ve sthaked out a town 
site sur, ferninst the claims, sur. My claims are 
quartz claims, sur. I have one island, sur; jist 
big enough for one claim, sur ; jist twinty achers 
on it, sur. The natives took out thirty-six 
thousand dohlers of gold from that island six- 
teen years ago, sur, and thin abandoned it, sur, 
162 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


because, sur, they didn’t know how to work the 
quartz, sur. What they found came aisy, sur. 
It was in a pocket, like, sur, but there’s tins of 
thousands of tons of rich quartz, sur, on that 
island that I belave, sur, is worth millions of 
dohlers, sur. I’ve named me town site Butte 
City, sur. I’m from Butte City, Montana, me- 
self, sur. I’ve mined in the Sthates twilve 
years, sur. I jined the arhmy whin the war 
brhoke out, sur; got me discharge, sur; and if 
it’s rich quartz mines ye’d like to see, sur, it’s 
meself thet ’ud like to show yez mine sur.' 

When I was in Manila, in the Manila Club 
rooms, I had heard of a little island off Min- 
danao that was reported to have rich quartz; 
heard that the natives had made rich finds on 
it ; knew a party of Americans had sent a man 
down to Mindanao to preempt it and that their 
man had got there too late, as an Irishman had 
got in ahead and got his stakes down first. 
Where off Mindanao the island was I didn’t 
know. I was intensely interested in McDinnis 
and his little island by this time. I had heard 
163 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


of McDinnis in Lurigao before I left for Man- 
suran, as a windy Irishman, who blew into town 
occasionally with wild stories about his Butte 
City and quartz claims. How he had gone off 
by his lonesome and was staking claims, and 
holding them down in the Jaser district, and was 
trying to get the boys in Lurigao over his way 
for company, and how none of them believed 
he had anything worth holding down. Among 
other characteristics of the man, the liberal use 
in his conversation of the vocative ‘sir’ was 
mentioned. 

It was only by chance that I heard the scrap 
of conversation, alluded to in the club at Ma- 
nila. It had gone in at one ear and out of the 
other and I hadn't mentioned it to Jow or any- 
one in Lurigao. I wondered if I had stumbled 
on to something. I was willing to hear Mac 
talk. 

‘Yez can’t mine quartz widout money, Mis- 
ther Allen, sur. None of the miners here have 
any money, sur. They’re all ex-soldiers like 
meself, sur; wid only a few dohlers they got 
164 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


whin they got their discharge, sur. They’re all 
looking for free placer gold where the natives 
have washed the ground over for hundreds of 
years, sur; and they’ve niver found much free 
gold in the Philipaine Islands, sur. If they 
ever find it, it will be in quartz, sur. It’s the 
same way in Cagayan disthrict, sur, down the 
coast, sur. I was down there for six months, 
sur ; and I have three claims I have sthaked and 
racorded down there in the Pigton minin’ 
ragion, sur. I heard of this island, sur ; and I’ve 
been on it for six months, sur ; and it’s McDin- 
nis as’ll hold it, sur, till some one comes along 
wid money that’ll go in wid me, sur, to work it, 
sur.’ 

‘Any timber over in that region, Mac?’ I 
asked. T heard before I came to Mindanao 
that there were rich timber tracts down here. 
I’ve been twenty miles back in the country and 
haven’t seen a timber proposition that I’d go 
across two States to look into.’ 

‘Is it thimber, yez’r afther, Misther Allen, 
sur? There’s great thimber over in the Jaser 
ragion, sur/ 

165 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


'Mac/ I said, Til go with you. How do 
we get there ?’ 

Tve a beautiful banka, sur, wid a native to 
paddle. I’ll take ye over in me banka, sur, and 
I’ll take your Misther Jow along, sur.’ 

'Oh, one of us is enough, Mac,’ I said. 

I had no use for Jow, but Mac had under- 
stood that Jow and I were together; that Jow 
was a practical mining man, and he wanted to 
do the generous and take us both along ; besides 
the more men from the United States that he 
could interest in his district the better he would 
be pleased. 

Jow, coming into the restaurant at this point, 
Mac made for him, gave him the same song 
he had given me and asked him to go to Jaser to 
look at his claims, and he accepted on the spot. 
Jow hadn’t heard the little island story, but had 
expressed his disgust for the placer mining 
region we had visited, and had remarked that 
he’d like to strike a rich quartz mine. So Jow 
and I were booked again to be companions on a 
hunt for gold, but not partners, this time. 

166 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


‘Mac/ I said, when I saw that Jow was 
booked for passage in his banka, ‘what kind 
of a boat have you got ; and how long a sail is 
it ? I’m a very cautious as well as a timid man, 
and don’t want to run into any danger. Are 
the natives friendly over in Jaser?’ 

T have a beautiful banka, sur, and the natives 
are as mild as shape, sur. There’s tin thousand 
of them in that ragion, sur, and I’ve bin among 
’em now for six months, sur; the only white 
man in that ragion, sur. One white man can 
hold up tin thousand of these natives, sur, wid 
a six shooter. I’m King in that counthry, sur. 
Ye’ll run no dhanger if ye go wid McDinnis, 
sur. I’ll git ye over and git ye back safe, sur.’ 

We hung around Lurigao for another day. 
I tried to get Captain Bevens to sell me another 
lot of supplies to take on the trip but he sourly 
refused. One Jukley, a miner from the Klon- 
dike, who had been trying his fortune in the 
Cagayan district and had left, disgusted with 
the outlook there, had come to Lurigao and was 
included in Mac’s invitation to go with us to 
16 7 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


Jaser. Five of us to go in Mac’s ‘beautiful 
banka’ — Mac, Jukley, Jow, a native and my- 
self. I hadn’t seen the banka. I hoped Mac 
spoke the truth, and that aside from her beauty, 
she would be big and safe, as it was to be a 
seventeen mile cruise. I succeeded in buying a 
small ham from our restaurant keeper, for 
which I paid $5 and was glad to get it at 
that. Mac had bought some rice and codfish, 
and the next morning, Jukley, with his earthly 
possessions in a cheap oilcloth grip; Jow, with 
some clothing tied up in a blanket ; I, with that 
precious ham and some of my wardrobe in a 
gunny sack, which I managed to buy at a Chi- 
nese store, with Mac at our head, took our way 
to the bay where Mac had his native and ‘beau- 
tiful banka’ in waiting for us. It was a lower- 
ing morning with a stiff breeze blowing. 

The day before, after I had learned of Juk- 
ley’s addition to our passenger list, I became 
solicitous about the safety of a seventeen mile 
ride in Mac’s banka, but Mac said : ‘Have no 
fear, Misther Allen, sur. Ye’s safe wid Mc- 
168 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


Dinnis, sur. Ye’ll niver catch McDinnis where 
there’s ony dangher on the wather, sur. I can’t 
shwim a fut, sur. We don’t git far away from 
land, sur. We kape close to shore, sur. Most 
of the way is through manghrove swhamps, 
sur, along the shore; narrow canals like, sur; 
through manghrove swhamps, sur, that grow 
out in the edge of the ocean, sur. How far can 
ye shwim, Misther Allen, sur?’ 

I told Mac that I thought I could swim two 
miles if my life depended on it, but that I didn’t 
want to get wet. 

‘Yer all right, Misther Allen,’ Mac replied, 
‘the little alleys or canals are only about one 
hundhred and fifty feet wide; there’ll be no 
dangher, sur ; ye can’t sink one of these bankas, 
sur.’ 

The native had the banka ready for us, with 
Mac’s rice and codfish loaded into her. He had 
a sail rigged well aft, made of split gunny 
sacks. I looked the craft over. 

Mac’s ‘beautiful banka’ was a dugout twelve 
feet from bow to poop with just beam enough 
169 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


for a man to sit in her. She lay on the edge of 
Lurigao Bay, a sheet of water six miles wide. 
A choppy sea was running, whitecaps covering 
the surface. Two sides of the bay were fringed 
with a growth of mangroves. I didn’t know 
in what direction Jaser lay. I supposed we’d 
skirt along the shore. I had misgivings about 
jetting into her even in that case, but we stowed 
our baggage in as best we could. I took my 
seat in the bow a-top of the baggage with my 
knees well up under my chin. Jukley was next 
to me. Jow sat in the middle, the native was 
next to him with a paddle, while Mac was in the 
stern to manage the sail and steer. Five men 
going to sea in a hollowed out log with a stiff 
land breeze blowing! Mac shoved her off, 
jumped in and steered for the middle of the 
bay to strike the shore directly opposite. 

‘Heavens! Mac,’ I shouted, ‘where are you 
going ? Thought you were going to keep close 
to land?’ 

‘Don’t yez have ony fear, Misther Allen, 
sur,’ Mac said. ‘It’s siventeen miles to Jaser 
170 

























. 




“There’s no dangher sur,” mac said, “you can’t stnk 
a banka sur.” — Page 171. 



TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


if we cut achross the bay. It cuts off tin miles 
if we cut achross, sur. We wouldn’t get to 
Jaser to-night if we wint ahround, sur. There’s 
no dangher, sur. Yez can’t sink one of these 
bankas, sur. Yez’ll niver find McDinnis where 
there’s ony dangher on the wather, sur. I can’t 
shwim a fut, sur.’ 

‘That’s all right, Mac,’ I said. ‘See how 
far you can wade’ (Mac was six feet three if 
he was an inch), ‘get into shore or turn around 
and let me out,’ I said. We were scudding 
out into the bay before the wind — well out by 
this time — the whitecaps breaking over the 
side. 

‘We’d shwamp her if we turned ahround, 
sur,’ Mac said, ‘but there’s no dangher, sur. 
Yez can’t sink one of these bankas, sur. Don’t 
be afhraid, sur. There's no dangher, sur. 
Yez’ll niver find McDinnis where there’s any 
danger on the wather, sur. I ccn’t shwim a fut, 
sur.’ 

Mac was grinning and holding her to her 
course, and Jukley was scared. The native 
171 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


paddled. Jow just said one word with three 
letters — 'God!’ he said and picked up a cocoa- 
nut shell, from the bottom of the boat, and be- 
gan bailing out the water, and that was the 
only word I heard out of Jow’s head until we 
got across. There wasn’t a swear left in him. 
He just bailed water all the way across. He 
was scared, scared. His back was to me, but I 
could tell by the expression of his shoulder 
blades, as he bailed her out, just how scared he 
was. In my cramped position I couldn’t bail. 
I couldn’t do a thing but hang on and pray and 
listen to McDinnis, as he assured us that 
‘There’s no dangher, sur. Yez’ll niver catch 
McDinnis when there’s ony dangher on the 
wather, sur. I can’t shwim a fut, sur. Yez 
can’t sink one of these bankas, sur. This banka 
would carry sixtheen men, sur (five of us filled 
her chock). We cut off tin miles by cuttin’ 
achross, sur. We’d niver make Plasair if we 
wint ahround, sur.’ 

‘Was your Uncle scared, boys? Was he 
scared f If anyone had told me, on that voy- 
172 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


age across Lurigao Bay, that I’d ever meet the 
Garcia Club this side of heaven, I’d have named 
him a false prophet. Don’t let anyone ever 
shake your faith in miracles, boys. One of the 
most beautifully sublime things I’ve ever seen 
was the faith of McDinnis (who ‘couldn’t 
shwim a fut, sur’) in the unsinkability of ‘a 
banka, sur.’ We got to Jaser in the evening 
of that day in that same boat. Some of Mac’s 
one hundred and fifty foot canals through the 
mangroves proved to be three miles wide, and 
we had to cross Jaser Bay, seven miles wide, 
before we got to Jaser, but the water was 
smooth when we struck it and Mac explained 
again that ‘we’d cut off tin miles, sur/ by 
crossing the bay and not going around. The 
day so lowery when we started, turned out fair 
and beautiful. The bright azure sky overhead, 
the delightfully balmy air, the crystal water 
underneath, with its gorgeous plant-shaped 
growth of coral, and fishes of all the colors of 
the rainbow, swimming through it ; the luxuri- 
ant growth of palms, cocoanut trees and man- 
173 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


groves, altogether made a scene, for natural 
beauty, the like of which your Uncle had never 
gazed upon before. As I watched the fishes I 
wondered if they would be as brilliantly hued 
when out of the water. At a later date we caught 
some and found they were. In no other waters 
have I ever seen such fish. They were not 
large — from two to six inches long. 


174 


The Garcia 

VOL. II. CLINTON, N. Y., MAY, 1902. No. 5 


Continuation of Uncle George's Address 
to the Garcia Club. 

We got to Jaser at five o’clock. Jaser is a 
barrio of perhaps a thousand souls, located on 
one of the most beautiful bays I have ever seen, 
almost landlocked. The town is on Mindanao, 
as I have said, nestling at the foot of a range of 
mountains. There are numerous barrios up 
and down the coast, with about ten thousand 
population in the whole cluster. Cocoanuts 
and hemp are the staples raised. It is a goodly 
land, the climate and the country resembling 
our Puget Sound. Beautiful little islands are 
scattered up and down the coast. 

Mac took us to the Presidents house. The 
Presidenti was not at home. The Vice-Presi- 
clenti took his place. Mac had spoken true. 
i75 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


Mac was King in that country. The natives all 
bowed down to him. He told us he would put 
us up at the Presidenti’s house and he did. He 
marched us into the Presidenti’s residence, a 
large, and, for that country, well built, wooden 
house. ‘These are my friends/ he announced 
to the Vice-Presidenti. ‘We are hungry. We 
want supper and we want it dom quick.’ He 
sent a native for our baggage. He domiciled 
Jow and me in a large room with two beds in it, 
positively the best beds I had slept in, or seen, 
in the Islands. There was not a woman to be 
seen in the house. The Presidenti was a 
bachelor or a widower. His mother kept his 
house for him and she was visiting in Lurigao. 
Some natives brought our baggage from the 
boat. My precious ham was produced, some 
eggs were found, some ham was fried with 
the eggs, and we supped, three hours later, on 
ham and eggs and rice. 

‘Three hours later’ was quick to get that 
meal when you know the Filipino servant. 
Mac stormed and ordered. They took their time. 

176 





“I 


PHOTOGRAPHED THAT SQUAD 


WITH MY CAMERA. ' 


Page 177. 



TO THE GARCIA CLUB 

The Secretary of the barrio called on us 
shortly after we arrived. He was, by all odds, 
the brightest Filipino I met in the Islands; a 
young man of thirty-five years. He was also 
chief of police and our Government had in- 
trusted him with ten Winchester shotguns. 
Very proud was he of his little military squad 
of ten natives. He called them together and 
drilled them for our inspection. They were the 
only protection that ten thousand population 
had against insurrectos and ladrons, who in- 
fested the mountains round about the barrios, 
and who had, but a few days before, made an 
attack on the town and killed a number of loyal 
natives. I tried to find out how often those 
attacks were made and if another one was about 
due. Those ten shotguns and two six-shooters, 
in our party, were the only protection against 
insurrectos this side of Lurigao, and Lurigao 
seventeen miles away by banka, ‘ if yez cut 
across the bays and didn’t go around, sur. ’ I 
photographed that squad, with my camera, with 
the Presidents house for a background, only 
seven of the ten getting into the picture, 

1 77 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


During my stay in Jaser and on my jour- 
neys out to Mac’s mines, I had one of those 
shotguns with me and slept that night with it 
at the head of my bed, and a box of cartridges 
within reach. The price of the favor was my 
promise to mail the Secretary a photograph of 
the squad when I got back to Manila and had 
my films developed ; a promise which was faith- 
fully kept. 

The next morning dawned bright and beau- 
tiful. Mac was up with the sun threatening 
dire vengeance on the Presidenti’s servants if 
breakfast wasn’t forthcoming, ‘ pronto, ’ and by 
eight o’clock we were off for Mac’s mines, 
seven miles away, across Jaser Bay, in another 
direction from that in which we had crossed the 
night previous. The Secretary sent us out 
with a fine large banka, twice the size of the 
boat that brought us over from Lurigao, with 
two natives to paddle it. I objected to taking 
any more trips in Mac’s ‘ beautiful banka. ’ I 
wanted more of a boat under me. 

Our party was composed of Mac, Jow, 
178 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


Jukley and myself, with the natives. At ten 
o’clock we sailed up to Mac’s island, Lampania, 
where the story went that $36,000 worth of 
gold had been taken out sixteen years before. 
Mac’s tent and camping outfit he had left on 
Lampania in charge of a family of natives who 
lived on an adjoining island, Balibayon (not 
more than a stone’s throw away from Lam- 
pania), on which his town site, ‘ Butte City, ’ 
was located. 

His little tent showed white in the sunlight 
as we neared his island. 

He hailed the family of natives as we rowed 
past ‘ Butte City, ’ and asked if everything was 
all right on Lampania, and got an assuring 
reply. 

We disembarked and stood on Mac’s bo- 
nanza. There was the shaft the natives had 
sunk years ago, with heaps of quartz reaching 
down to the water’s edge. Was that gold bear- 
ing quartz? was the question. Was Mac 
right? Was this region rich in gold bearing 
quartz? For six months this man had lived 
179 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 

alone on this lonely little island in the South 
Seas, honestly believing that untold millions 
were locked in the quartz on this and the other 
rock ribbed islands adjoining. For weeks he 
had patiently and strenuously worked with pick 
and shovel, alone, to clean out the shaft and 
sink it still deeper, hoping to find another pocket 
of the precious metal, and in the meantime 
staking out other claims on the two adjoining 
islands, Layab and Balibayon, putting down 
his stakes and cleaning out lines around five 
other claims, doing the work necessary to hold 
them, in accordance with United States 
mining laws, and also staking out a sixty acre 
town site on Balibayon. Visions of untold mil- 
lions were in his mind. His last trip to Lurigao 
was not only for rice and codfish but in order 
to take samples of ore from his different claims 
to Captain Gotit with request to have them 
forwarded to the United States for assay. 
Months before, he had sent samples to Manila 
to an assayer, who he heard was located there, 
and had anxiously waited for returns ; going to 
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TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


Lurigao, the nearest post-office, to see if word 
had come to him. None had come to cheer or 
dishearten him, for reasons that I learned later. 
Was Mac right? Was he in the region of rich 
gold quartz? Had he preempted claims, the 
working of which, with scientific, American 
mining machinery would make the Treadwell 
mine look like thirty cents ? Mac believed and 
talked it, as he enthusiastically pounded up 
some rock from the bottom of the shaft on 
Lampania, in a cast-iron mortar, the very 
mortar used by the natives sixteen years earlier, 
and which he had unearthed from the bottom 
of the shaft when he first took possession. 
Mac pounded the rock industriously. A little 
native boy, from the family on* Balibayon, 
stood at his elbow. Jukley waited hard by until 
Mac should have enough for a trial pan, and 
Jow stood thoughtfully looking on, smoking a 
cigarette. Jukley took the pan to the water’s 
edge, washed it down to a spoonful of sand, and 
we all crowded eagerly around to see the re- 
sult of the test. No trace of gold was found 
181 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


in the pan, ‘which/ Jukley said, ‘proves 
nothing, other than the quartz is not free mill- 
ing quartz; that same quartz worked by the 
Cyanide process may yield a hundred dollars to 
the ton/ 

“I wish I had my assaying outfit,” I heard 
Jow mutter. 

******** 

The little native boy caught some fish, bass 
shaped, of a beautiful chrome green color, and 
fried them in the fat of that precious ham which 
we had brought with us, and we dined on fried 
fish and boiled rice. 

I had caught the gold fever, so had Jow, so 
had Jukley. 

I only had to propose a move to have Jow 
want to do something else. I proposed that 
we stay on Lampania over night. Jow pro- 
posed that we row back to Jaser. He wanted 
to do some prospecting on Mindanao back of 
Jaser. I told him I thought that was a good 
plan, that he and Jukley could take the banka 
and natives and row back to Jaser and that I 
182 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


would spend the night on Lampania with Mac. 
Jow didn’t want to leave me alone with Mac, 
but Mac favored my plan ; so back to Jaser Jow 
and Jukley started. As they pushed off for 
Jaser, I said to Jow : ‘Mr. Jow, Mac and I will 
be ready to leave this island for Jaser to-mor- 
row afternoon at four o’clock. You can speak 
Spanish, will you make it clear to the Secretary 
that I am over here on this island, and ask him 
to send a good safe banka with a couple of 
natives to bring us back to Jaser?’ Jow 
agreed, and I was left alone with Mac, to spend 
the night on that lonesome little twenty-acre 
island, in the South Seas. I spent the rest of 
the afternoon on Lampania listening to Mac’s 
wondrous castles in the air, as he recounted the 
wealth of gold that he was cocksure was locked 
in the quartz on his claims, thinking much, but 
letting Mac do the talking. 

As we turned in for the night, in his little 
tent, I on Mac’s cot, and Mac on a blanket 
thrown on some ‘foin sohft boards, sur,’ that 
he had on his island. I said : ‘Mac, what did 
183 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 

you bring me clear over here for? You said 
you’d show me timber. We haven’t passed 
timber enough, considered in the light of a 
lumbering proposition, to wad a gun. What 
did you hope to gain by getting me away from 
all the haunts of civilization, with insurrectos 
back in the mountains, liable to swoop down 
on us at any time, and running the risk of 
drowning me on Lurigao Bay in that little 
hollow log? What’s your scheme, Mac? What 
do you want ?’ 

‘Oh! come now, Misther Allen, sur, you’re 
no spring chicken. You know there’s great 
gold prospects here in the Philipanes, if you 
can set your fut down in the right place, and 
if these claims are what I belave they are, and 
what you hope they are, sur ; there’s plenty of 
money back in the Sthates to develop the 
moins, sur. I’ll tell you the thruth, Misther 
Allen, sur. Whin I got me discharge from the 
arhmy and me finals, sur, I had $500 in gold, 
sur. I spint six months in the Pigton mining 
disthrict around Cagayan, sur, prospecting for 
184 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


gold, sur. I spirit half of me money in that 
way, sur, and I have three claims sthaked and 
racorded in that disthrict, sur; and work done 
on thim to hold thim for six months, sur. But 
I have no faith in thim claims, sur, to tell you 
the thruth, sur. I don’t think that disthrict is 
good for anything, sur. The miners are 
abandoning it now, sur. Jukley had jist come 
from there, sur, and the boys are more thin 
ever disgusthed wid it, sur. But I heard of 
this island, sur, and got in ahead of another 
party who wanted to sthake it, sur. I’ve been 
here now for six months, sur, holding this and 
other claims down, sur; and whin Congress 
moves, and gives us the same mining laws as 
the Sthates, my claims will be raspicted, sur, and 
I’ll get titles, if I can sthay by the scheme and 
hold it down, sur. I spint me last peso in 
Lurigao, sur, and I need some money to kape 
me going, sur. When I saw you, sur, and 
heard what you was doing in the islands, sur, 
I said to meself, ‘McDinnis, you must git that 
man over to your claims, and let him see wid 
185 


UNCLE: GEORGE’S LETTERS 


his own eyes just what you’ve got,’ and I got 
you here, sur; and if these claims are worth 
anything, sur, they are worth tin million 
dohlers, sur.’ 

‘Mac,’ I said, ‘you’ve a great head. I don’t 
know whether your claims are worth a cent. 
How many did you say you had ?’ 

‘I’ve got the ‘Anicondia’ and ‘White Cross,’ 
on the River Iponon, and the ‘Wake-up’ in the 
lower Pigton disthrict, down Cagayan way. 
The new ‘Anicondia’ here on Lampania. The 
‘Never Sweat.’ The ‘Robert Emmet,’ and the 
‘Green Mountain,’ on Layab Island, right next 
to this island. The ‘Mountain Con’ and ‘High 
Ore,’ and the town site, ‘Butte City,’ jist 
achross from here on Balibayon, sur ; and they 
are worth tin million dohlers if they are worth 
a cint, sur.’ 

‘All right, Mac,’ I said, ‘if they are worth 
a cent, I guess they are.’ I’ll grub stake you 
for $37.50 a month and give you one hundred ; 
thousand dollars of the capital stock of a com- 
pany I’ll organize to work your claims, if I 
186 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


find the ore warrants it after I get it assayed. 
You to give me a two years’ option on every- 
thing you’ve named, and deliver to me all your 
titles in the claims as soon as I deliver to you 
my agreement to give you stock in such a com- 
pany, you to stay by the claims and do the 
necessary work to hold them. The option to 
lapse if I do not keep up your grub stake/ 
Mac didn’t say a word for fifteen minutes; I 
thought he had gone to sleep. Finally: 
‘Misther Allen, lave Butte City out of the 
option and I’ll go ye.’ 

‘Leave nothing out,’ I said. T want an 
option on everything you’ve got in the Philip- 
pine Islands but your clothes and that ‘beauti- 
ful banka.” 

‘All right, sur/ Mac said. ‘Misther Allen, 
I’ll go ye, sur,’ and we both went to sleep and 
dreamed of ten million dollar gold mines. 


187 


The Garcia 

VOL. II. CLINTON, N. Y., JUNE, 1902. No. 6 


Conclusion of Unde George’s Address 
to the Garcia Club. 

The next day Mac and I took a small banka 
that Mac’s family of natives on Balibayon 
loaned us, visited all of his claims on the two 
adjoining islands, and I saw Mac take out the 
ore from the shafts he had sunk on them. He 
handed it to me and I wrapped it up, in some 
mosquito netting Mac had, and carefully 
labelled each lot. At three o’clock we were 
through, and back on Lampania, and at four 
jp’ clock the natives were back with a banka from 
Jaser. 

I looked at the boat. It was smaller than 
Mac’s ‘beautiful banka’ and had a hole in the 
bow. 

‘Mac,’ I said, ‘I’ll never cross Jaser Bay in 
188 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 


that boat. You heard me ask Jow to send a 
safe boat over. What do you think he means 
by letting such a tub come after us ? He knows 
you can’t ‘swim a fut.’ ’ 

‘I think he manes todhrown us sur,’ Mac 
said. 

‘Well, what are we to do?’ I asked. 

‘Well, sur, Misther Allen, that boat ain’t 
safe to go to Jaser in, sur. Opposite Jaser, on 
Balibayon, there is a native who has a foin, 
large banka. We’ll use this boat to skirt 
around Balibayon until we come to the native, 
directly opposite Jaser, and git him to take us 
achross the bay, sur.’ 

As we rounded the point of Balibayon, and 
came to Jaser Bay, a stiff breeze was blowing 
and the bay was covered with whitecaps. 

‘Mucho malo’ (very bad), the natives said, 
as they looked across the bay. They were 
afraid to cross with the old boat, and when a 
native in a banka says ‘mucho malo,’ it’s time 
for a white man to say his prayers, if he hap- 
pens to be in the banka. Mac explained to 
189 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


them that we wouldn’t cross in that boat, and 
directed them to hug close to the shore of Bali- 
bayon until we came to the native’s house, 
which we did, and I got the native to paddle us 
across the bay for two pesos (two Mexican dol- 
lars) . 

We got to Jaser in time for supper, with my 
samples of ore, and Jow saw us land and saw a 
native bring the ore out of the boat; and he 
knew that if Mac’s mines were good for any- 
thing, your Uncle George was in on the deal, 
and that he was not, and he didn’t seem too 
cordial. 

I went to the Secretary’s house the next day, 
and drew up the option on the lines we had 
agreed upon. I wrote that option under diffi- 
culties. The Secretary’s pig, a friendly brute, 
was rubbing against me and his fighting cock 
in the corner kept up an incessant crowing. 
The Filipinos keep the pigs they fatten to eat in 
the house with the family. All over the Islands 
pigs are used for scavengers, and the pigs that 
run the street aren’t fit to eat. The option writ- 
190 






“The secretary signed as witness.” — Page 191 



iTO THE GARCIA CLUB 


ten, the pig subsided and lay quietly down on 
the floor and the Secretary signed as a witness 
to our signatures. I took the Secretary’s pic- 
ture as he sat down to sign; his wife stood by 
the door and the pig lay quietly on the floor at 
the Secretary’s feet. I forgave the pig the an- 
noyance he had caused me on account of his 
keeping quiet at this time, as I particularly 
wanted him in the picture. The only attempt 
at artistic decoration in the Secretary’s home 
was a page from the Police Gazette , which Mac 
had brought from Lurigao, and which illus- 
trated a boxing bout. 

I could do no more in Jaser. If there was 
any gold in that region I stood as good a chance 
to get it as anyone, and there was no timber 
worth mentioning. My next move was to get 
the ore to an assayer and see what was in it. I 
left Jow and Jukley in Jaser prospecting for 
gold and Mac took me back to Lurigao in a 
good, safe banka. I didn’t go to see the Datto. 
The boat that brought me to Lurigao was wait- 
ing at her dock, ready to sail for Manila. As 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


I looked at her I wondered if I had ever been 
foolish enough to be afraid to sail in her. She 
seemed like a palace of safety, and I was per- 
fectly willing and anxious to board her, and 
sail back to Manila in her. I paid Mac a three- 
months’ grub stake, said good-bye to every- 
one in Lurigao except Captain Bevens, and got 
to Manila without mishap, and had one of those 
first-class staterooms all to myself on the up 
trip, that is, I was the only occupant of the 
room that paid fare. 

I was anxious to get that ore assayed. I 
supposed, of course, I would find an assay office 
in Manila. I intended to find out what was in 
it, and if it proved to be rich, go back to Min- 
danao with blasting powder and such supplies 
as could be procured there, for sinking the 
shafts on the different claims, also take back a 
stock of provisions and stay with Mac for a few 
months and further develop the claims. There 
was no assay office in Manila. Positively no 
chance to tell what was in that quartz. I took 
my samples to the Department of Mining, and 
192 


TO THE GARCIA CLUB 

the chief looked them over and said they didn’t 
look promising, was sorry he could not tell me 
positively what was in them. He told me to 
come back in two days and he would let me 
have a rough assay which would give me an 
idea whether they were very rich or not, but 
that the Government machinery was not in 
shape to do any assaying. 

He gave me the address of an assayer, the 
only one in Manila, the same to whom Mac 
had sent his samples. I went to this address and 
found the party gone, was told he had left 
Manila months before; which explained why 
Mac got no word about his samples. 

In two days I went back to our bureau of 
mining and got the results of the rough assay 
they made for me. They had found no trace 
of gold, and furthermore, I was told that 
nothing had come to the notice of that bureau 
that promised gold in the Philippine Islands. 

A very clever official connected with the 
bureau said : ‘Mr. Allen, I know all about that 
part of New York State you hail from. If you 
193 


UNCLE GEORGE’S LETTERS 


want to hunt for gold real bad, you needn’t 
come way off here to the Philippine Islands to 
look for it. There are better prospects for gold 
up on Black River in New York State, just a 
few miles north of Clinton, than you will find 
in the Philippine Islands.” 

This was discouraging. 

There was a ship about to sail for Hong 
Kong. I left the Philippine Islands on that ship. 

I had only one thing on my mind, to make 
connections with steamboats and railway trains 
to land me in Clinton, New York, U. S. A. 

I didn’t miss a connection. I came home 
across the Pacific. In thirty-five days from the 
date I left Manila I was back in Clinton. I 
brought my samples with me. 

A competent assay er, here in the United 
States, who has made thorough assays of each 
sample, writes me that they are positively no 
good. 

Boys, I didn’t know it was so late. 

I move we adjourn. 

And the Garcia Club adjourned. 


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JUL 18 iyp2 


i cop> mi. ro u >iv, 

]8 1902 



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